


The Path Untrodden

by TwinKats



Series: KinkMeme Fills [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, BAMF Ignis, BAMF Noctis, BAMF Prompto, Cor got dragged into this and he doesn't like it, Dad!Cor, Fix-It, Gen, Gil's basically a drow, Gladio gets called out on his shit, Gladio just wants it all to stop, Noctis' depression rears its ugly head a lot, Prompto's goatee, Solheim magic was fucking weird, Time Travel, accidentally time travel Prompto, all these boys are fucked, and Prompto is low-key gay for all of his friends, and it kind of sucks, kind of, large time gap, like seriously just stop, no like seriously he's basically drow and a necromancer so that's a thing, no one knows how to deal with this, seriously how the fuck is this is life?, time travel induced age gap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-01-11 05:36:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18423951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinKats/pseuds/TwinKats
Summary: Solheim was the height of civilization long enough that their ruins were ruins over 2000 years ago, andstillhad the power to function in the time of the King of Light. They should've realized something was very wrong the minute Prompto remarked on the lights being on, and yet no one was home.Prompto didn’t notice his foot press down upon one of the circles, but he did feel the flare underneath his boot and the surprised yelp as the world lit up red around him. He had a second to shout, “Uh, guys?!” before the world tilted sideways.“Prompto!” Ignis shouted back, but then everything shattered not unlike the few times when Noctis decided to drag Prompto off in a warp in the past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [FFXV KinkMeme](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/5690.html?style=mine&thread=11529530)
> 
> ALSO: This is going to get its [own little AU verse](http://xadoheandterra.tumblr.com/tagged/fic:%20the%20burning%20of%20solheim) now because ideas.
> 
> Want to scream at me? Ask questions? I have a [tumblr.](http://xadoheandterra.tumblr.com)
> 
> Want specifics for this fic? Check out the [fic tag.](http://xadoheandterra.tumblr.com/tagged/fic:%20the%20path%20untrodden)

Ignis parked the car as close as he could get it, with another broken down stranger directly in their path. Prompto wanted to groan in dismay as he stretched—the Vesperpool was hot and muggy and just from the few minutes of walking they’d done earlier to get a nice group photo, Prompto was fairly certain his nice boots were covered in marsh muck. From the car Noctis didn’t bother to withhold his groan of complaint and, sluggishly, climbed his way out.

“Your certain we can find Mythril here, Iggy?” Prompto asked as he watched how Noctis brushed at his clothes and smacked at the bugs that tried to get in his face.

“If Talcott is to be believed, yes,” Ignis murmured. He shoved up glasses from across a sweat-soaked nose and Prompto nodded in understanding. “Come, Noct! We best get a move on.”

Noctis waved a hand with a tiredly muttered, “Coming!” and in quick succession their party of three formed up. Prompto eyed the way his best friend rubbed at his back with a faint grimace and not for the first time he wondered just where Gladio ran off to and _why_.

Noctis slapped a hand to Prompto’s shoulder with a grimace of a grin and said lightly, “Hey, he’ll be back before you know it,” as if Prompto or Ignis could tell how much the big guy’s absence really hurt the young King.

Prompto stumbled out a, “Y-Yeah!” and they marched onward. The walk only enforced the heat of the days sun as it bore down upon them. Their clothes were ill-fit for the weather, Crownsguard fatigues were meant for the cool breeze of Insomnia, not the oppressive natures of the world outside the Wall. Leide and Lestallum both ran hotter than Prompto, Ignis, or Noctis were used to, and Vesperpool was even _worse_. They’d only been in the area for thirty minutes and already Prompto’s clothes were soaked through.

With a grimace Prompto tugged off his jacket and dismissed it into the armiger. Ignis refused to dress down even when Prompto could see the heat was slowly getting to him as well, and Noctis just tugged his jacket off and tied it around his waist by the sleeves instead of outright dumping it into their weird pocket dimension of magic.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Ignis said to the group, upright and face stern although he gave them each a bit of a grin that Prompto returned. They wandered through the bush for a while, the muck and mud of the swamp stuck to their boots, but every few minutes Prompto saw something to catch his eye and he’d pull his camera up and out and snap a few quick photographs.

“Think Gladio will like these?” Prompto asked. He nudged Noctis in the shoulder and showed him the viewscreen of his camera. His thumb swiped through a few of the more recent shots to which Noctis let out a faint laugh, especially of the shot of Ignis’ sweat-soaked clothes as he moved ahead.

“Yeah, think he’ll love these, Prom,” Noctis shoved Prompto back and they grinned at one another as they moved forward.

They passed from brush and plants and swamp to something far more ruins like that reminded Prompto eerily of broken structures they passed by as they drove around Cleigne. Built up towers of stone-carved brick that stood the tests of time better than a lot of the cement structures had in a few of the more remote places of the lands outside of Insomnia.

“Wow,” Prompto murmured and snapped a few shots of the structures that poked up out of the swamp. “Wonder how old this is?”

“Old,” Ignis said shortly, and then sighed at Prompto’s pleading look. “If records are to be believed these structures are from the time of Solheim, most likely, although there isn’t much left that dates back that far to tell us more. Any scientific undertakings into the nature of these ruins or who built them have long been put on hold, what with the war with Niffelheim and all.”

“So,” Prompto muttered as he snagged a few more shots. “Really old, then?”

“Quite.”

* * *

 

Noctis noticed the car first, out of all of them. Prompto noticed it within short order, but only because of how Noctis suddenly went stiff in the photo Prompto had badgered him into posing for. They’d only wandered a small ways away from Ignis, so the soft and nervous, “Uh, Iggy?” was rather quickly responded to.

“Yes, Prompto?”

“We’ve got company.”

Ignis rounded around the wall he’d been inspecting and then shoved up his glasses when he saw what Prompto and Noctis both already caught sight of. The old red convertible with a racing stripe along the side was familiar in a way that gave Prompto a sinking feel in his stomach. He glanced over to Ignis who frowned and pressed his glasses further up his face from where they slipped down.

“Stay close to me,” Ignis eventually said, and the two men nodded and quickly formed around the royal retainer.

“You really think he’s here, Iggy?” Prompto asked, almost nervously.

“I’d certainly think so,” Ignis murmured. “Are you alright, Noct?”

Next to them Noctis clenched and unclenched his fists and Prompto could understand why. Days back, before they knew that the weird hobo-man was actually Chancellor Izunia from Niffelheim, Noctis had confided in them that Ardyn made him feel _weird_. He already gave off this horrible creepy vibe as it was to Prompto, but Prompto didn’t have the inherent magical gifts of the Lucis Caelum line. None of them did.

Noctis once described being around Ardyn being like near a light socket that felt on the edge of being burnt out. It was this static in the air that raised the hair on Noctis’ arms. It left a sort of coppery taste in his mouth, and he said it felt like he needed to _warp_ except—he couldn’t. Prompto didn’t get it, but he knew creepy when he saw it and Ardyn Izunia practically bled creepy. It made Prompto wonder if all Nif’s were just outright disturbing to be around, or if the Chancellor was a special brand of fuckery.

“I’m fine,” Noctis said eventually. “Let’s just find the entrance to this place and get out of here, alright?”

“Yes, let’s,” Ignis deferred and Prompto shivered.

They moved closer to the car which was parked right in front of what looked like the start of the ruins going deeper and Prompto resisted the urge to pull out Quicksilver from the armiger.

“What is he even doing here?” Prompto muttered.

“Who knows,” Ignis said back under his breath. As a group they approached the columns and found themselves forced to pause as the man himself slipped around one and right into their field of view.

It was the first time Prompto had ever seen the man without his hat actually on his head. The wine-red coloring of his hair actually looked really nice in this lighting and for a second Prompto wondered if he could ask for a photograph because—well, the shadows did _something_ for the rugged homeless look of the Chancellor, he guessed.

Ardyn was polite when he addressed them, as he always was. His words always felt so odd to hear, though, and Prompto was about ninety-percent sure not even Gladio’s _dad_ talked like Ardyn did, but whatever. At least he wasn’t doing anything except being creepy and hiding and maybe stalking their little group. What a great time for Gladio to take a holiday.

Ignis handled the conversation, mostly because Prompto didn’t know what to say to someone like Ardyn without putting his foot in his mouth, and Noctis kept on pressing his fingers into his arms. Prompto nudged the darker haired man in the shoulder and pressed close as, upon Ignis ground out grumble of, “Oh, splendid,” did they start to follow the man.

“This feels like a trap, Iggy,” Noctis muttered as Prompto slung an arm around his shoulder.

“Well there’s nothing for it,” Ignis muttered back. “Just be prepared.”

They each dipped mental fingers into the armiger as they followed after the Chancellor. He led them right into the thick of the water—which, _gross_ , Prompto fought off a grimace of disgust at the feel of swamp water as it seeped into his boots—but Ardyn kept _talking_ and it dragged all of Prompto’s attention off of Noctis.

“Do keep up,” Ardyn said. He walked with a sort of listless fervor in front of them; Prompto watched how the man drifted to the side, and then course corrected and drifted back. Had he always had such a strange gait or was it the swamp water that made the carefully constructed movements of the man seem so upended, Prompto wondered.

Ardyn tilted his head down and gave their trio a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Prompto glanced to Noctis and then Ignis and drifted closer Ardyn at Ignis’ subtle tilt of his head. They made a bit of a train, with Prompto edged closer to Ardyn’s side and Ignis keep a subtle closeness to Noctis just in case something was to go wrong.

The walk wasn’t quiet, even if Ignis, Noctis, and Prompto didn’t want to converse with this man. He kept up a steady stream of conversation—probably liked to hear his own voice, Prompto thought—and while Ardyn kept his words polite and kind, there was a sharpness underlaid in them that raised the hairs of the back of Prompto’s neck.

Prompto also didn’t like the way those golden eyes pierced down at him as he moved on the man’s left, his hands itched to drag Quicksilver out of the armiger even if he had to play nice. The curl of Ardyn’s lips as he spoke in that ostentatious, verbose manner left Prompto—scared, for lack of a better term. He had this unerring feeling that they were walking right into whatever plans Ardyn had. This polite interruption and steady knowledge of their own actions and reasons to be here in the Vesperpool really made Prompto uncomfortable.

A nagging thought struck the blond; could Ardyn have Gladio?

* * *

 

There was power here and even Prompto could feel it. He wondered how Noctis felt in this place, where the lights were scarily still on for being something ancient and old. They’d already found themselves forced to cut through a large group of daemons that haunted the place, and the words of Aranea Highwind gave Prompto the chills.

He didn’t understand what the Empire wanted with this place—why were they hunting down the daemons? Aranea kept quiet for the reasons, refused to answer when questioned, but Prompto had a bad feeling about all of it. The small, strange circular indentations periodically placed in the floor gave off some sort of hum similar but completely _not_ to the lights.

The ground felt like it vibrated with something being barely held back. Prompto toed himself around another one of the circular shapes and then sucked in a large breath when they stepped through the door. The sight in front of them was utterly _breathtaking_ , the shimmer from the water’s surface and the way the light refracted down around them. It felt almost like looking into a pool in reverse.

Prompto jogged right up to the edge of the railing and pulled out his camera to grab a few snapshots with an almost awed sort of laugh.

“It’s breathtaking,” Noctis said as Prompto dismissed the camera back into the armiger.

“Yeah,” Prompto murmured.

“Is that the water’s surface, all the way up there?” Aranea questioned and it hit Prompto that they were _under water_.

How cool was that? Also, utterly terrifying and with a squeak Prompto scuttered backward because, hah, that shouldn’t have been possible, right? To be under the water looking up and yet not be in the water at all? What kind of _madness_ did Solheim get up to? Maybe that was why it felt like magic. Prompto shivered and inched along the wall for a moment and then glanced to Noctis who started to move forward with purpose.

“Are you alright?” Ignis questioned from Prompto’s side, and Prompto nodded sharply.

“Y-Yeah, fine,” Prompto said and tightened his grip on Quicksilver. “Let’s go catch up.” He moved to jog back up to Noctis with a nod to Ignis who smiled back.

Prompto didn’t notice his foot press down upon one of the circles, but he did feel the flare underneath his boot and the surprised yelp as the world lit up _red_ around him. He had a second to shout, “Uh, guys?!” before the world tilted sideways.

“Prompto!” Ignis shouted back, but then everything shattered not unlike the few times when Noctis decided to drag Prompto off in a warp in the past.

A second later Prompto stumbled forward with a weak laugh at the sight of the ruins still in front of him. He was fine, he was okay, right? Prompto patted down his shirt and let out a sigh of relief. Yeah, he was fine, still hot and sweaty and stinky from fighting daemons, but fine otherwise.

“I’m okay, guys! Nothing happened!” Prompto laughed giddily and stepped forward except—he frowned. He couldn’t see Ignis. Or Noctis. Or even Aranea. “Uh, guys?” Prompto glanced around, and then looked up—the water reflected light like prisms into the area but aside from it all around him was darkness. He could hear the sound of rocks being pushed about, the telltale groan of daemons as they worked to pull themselves out of the shadows.

Prompto was alone, in Steyliff, with daemons around every corner. His hand tightened on Quicksilver and he counted the magazine in it—fifteen bullets. He needed to reload if the sounds around him were any indication. Prompto grit his teeth and reached for the armiger—he’d have _words_ with everyone about just leaving him behind. So not cool, guys, really—Prompto froze again when he realized the familiar, cold-warmth of Noctis’ magic at the center of his chest wasn’t _there_.

The armiger—Prompto didn’t have access to the armiger. Or his bullets. His clothes— _food_ —and that shouldn’t be possible unless Noctis—unless Noct was—the first of the Goblins materialized and Prompto fired one bullet straight into its face before he took off running. He needed to find Noctis, to find Ignis—Prompto refused to believe that they were dead without proof. This was a cruel joke of some sort, it _had_ to be.

With a yelp Prompto ducked under the swipe of a scythe, and with wide and terrified eyes he booked it back for the entrance. Either they were further in and _left him_ —and not possible, Prompto grit his teeth and fought down tears, because that _wasn’t possible_. No, he’d meet them at the front and give them a few words of discontent because it wasn’t funny and Prompto refused to entertain the thought that Noct was _dead_.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Insomnian magic, Lucis Caelum magic, has its roots in Solheim. That meant certain pesky little things like Oaths had Consequences, and sharing Magic through Oaths had even more Consequences

Noctis felt the breath tear out of him with a sick and twisted sense that tied up near his heart. It _ached_ , every inch of himself screamed because one of _his_ wasn’t there anymore. It cloyed up into his throat long enough that he choked on the sensation and dropped to his knees, suddenly weakened as he felt the bond draw taunt and _snap_. He could hear the shards of glass in his ears, the sound of crystalline shattering depths in his very soul as he screamed.

“ _PROMPTO!_ ”

He didn’t notice how Aranea cursed and jumped back nearly thirty feet or hear how Ignis yelled his name as he gripped at his chest and tried to suck in a ragged breath, tried to _breathe_ through it like he’d been told as a child. It hurt—godsdamn did it hurt. Noctis bit down a sob and collapsed inward even as his magic burst outward in a maelstrom.

“Noct—NOCTIS—”

Fire whipped around him, ice burst from his feet, and lightning struck as Noctis tried to pull his sense out of _empty, broken, shattered shards of crystal glass_ that hammered into his chest and into his heart. Then, just as it started, it stopped. The magic petered out and Noctis dropped forward like a puppet with its strings cut as his vision darkened into blackness.

Ignis bit out a curse; he’d heard of stories, of course, being Noctis’ royal retainer since they were children. He knew the things to look out for, knew that when they swore their oaths—him as Hand and Gladio as Shield—that in the off chance something was to happen, what it could do to Noctis. Oaths like theirs were nothing to scoff at, especially since the Lucis Caelum line bore magic like no other except perhaps the Oracles of Tennebrae.

Still, he hoped to never see the day where Noctis felt a shattered bond. Ignis hoped instead that he’d see his brother pass into the Beyond long before them, so that he’d never need to deal with this type of pain. Kings of the past had gone mad from it, from the loss of a Hand or a Shield, and Ignis thought they would do well to keep this from Noctis and yet—he struggled to his feet. The magic had battered him just as much, the way Noctis pulled on everything in the sudden expounded grief.

Weak-legged Ignis fumbled over to his King and hauled the twenty-year-old up into his lap even as he brushed his fingers through Noctis’ dark locks of hair and stared at a face slack in unconsciousness, yet still tightened from pain. He tried to pull the younger man up but grunted with the lack of strength for it—what he wouldn’t do to have Gladio here with him, now.

“Oh, Noct,” Ignis murmured and then grimaced as he glanced to Aranea who stared at them with wide and almost terrified eyes. “Commodore Aranea,” Ignis tried to project strength into his voice, even though he knew it shook, “I am afraid we will need to stop here.”

Aranea looked at them, pressed her lips together, and nodded slowly.

“I…will take you to Lestallum.” Ignis watched how she used her spear to walk, a faint limp to her movements and for a moment he debated the off of a curative for the woman—except that meant he needed to slip into the armiger and with a shattered bond that might not be the best idea at the time. Instead Ignis grimaced and gave a brief nod.

“If you do not mind also picking up the Regalia before we leave?” Ignis posited.

“Of course not,” Aranea agreed. She dropped down to help Ignis get Noctis up between them, glanced at him with an almost concern that had Ignis look away. “Are you alright?”

“I will be fine,” Ignis said shortly.

“And the Prince?”

“ _King_.”

Aranea shrugged her shoulders. She muttered something about not understanding Insomnian ascension policies and an apology but Ignis didn’t listen. He focused more on Noctis and his breathing until she asked what she wanted. They limped their way back through the doors and into the winding, twisted halls; Aranea already with a radio out in her hand as she relayed the sudden need for departure and to have someone pick up the Regalia for them before they made it out.

“A stretcher will be ready once we reach the door,” Aranea said softly. “You mind telling me what that shit was?”

Ignis pressed his lips together and said, shortly, “A broken bond, and you better pray you never see one again.” He wanted to press his glasses up as he glared at her over the top of them, but she shook her head and said a soft apology as they started up the stairs. Ignis felt a little gratified that the woman could put two-and-two together and didn’t ask what a shattered bond _meant_. Granted he had no doubt she chalked it up to some ‘strange Insomnian magic’ but, well, the line of Lucis Caelum and their secrets and for good reason.

They breeched the door and Ignis immediately saw the stretcher that Aranea said would be waiting. With her help he deposited Noctis into place, once more with a careful brush of his fingers against his King’s brow, before he bowed his head and offered up a silent prayer for Prompto.

* * *

 

Ignis tried to reach Gladio the entire trip in the magitek dropship until they reached Lestallum, to no avail. Either the fool of a Shield left his phone behind and simply refused to answer, whatever the reason Ignis found himself grinding his teeth out of frustration. At any rate, with Aranea’s help, Ignis at the very least was able to get Noctis back into a room at the local hotel, Leville. She paid for the room, even, much to Ignis’ consternation.

“Here,” Aranea said once he’d gotten Noctis settled down. She thrust into his hands a slip of paper with a phone number on it, which caused him to frown in surprise. “Call me if you need any help. I’ll…keep an eye out for any Mythril for you, if we head back to Steyliff before you guys.”

Ignis rubbed at his eyes from under his glasses and murmured a short, “Thanks,” to which Aranea awkwardly nodded and took her leave. He sighed tiredly and tugged his glasses off, and with a sigh dropped them on the night stand next to the bed he’d gotten Noctis tucked into.

One hand reached out to grip at Noctis’ limp one, and Ignis fought hard to control and comport himself. The idea that technically Prompto could be _dead_ was not something he wanted to entertain, even if the proof stared him stark in the face. Even now, to see Noctis—his little brother in all but blood—unconscious in what is undoubtedly a full stasis _lock_ threatened to pull tears out of his eyes. How had this become their life?

Ignis scrubbed at his eyes with one hand and shakily tightened his grip on Noctis with the other. He murmured a short, “Wake up soon, Noct,” and bowed himself over the edge of the bed and over Noctis’ hand. “Please.” His hands shook and his breath shook and he tried to quell the fear that roiled in him. Fear that without Prompto Noctis would not wake the same—and it scared him to his very core.

For the next twenty-four hours Ignis remained by Noctis’ side and struggled with his own emotions. He thought to call Gladio some more on occasion for no other reason than to give the Shield a strong piece of his mind. A part of Ignis felt vindictive, lay the blame for this entire mess at Gladio’s feet. If he’d just been there—

—Ignis sighed as the phone rang and drew him from his melancholic thoughts. Tiredly he reached out and grasped at the device; he knew the number, knew that ringtone. With a tired message of his forehead and tapped to answer the call and raised the phone up toward his ear.

_“Hey, Iggy, I’m—”_

Ignis grit his teeth and said, voice thick, “I don’t want to hear it, Gladiolus.” Ignis could hear the way Gladio’s voice choked off in surprise. “You will get your ass to Leville in Lestallum, _immediately_.”

There was a moment of silence and then a softer, almost darker, _“Something happen?”_

Ignis felt a bitter laugh well up. _Something happen_? Oh yes, something happened. He gripped the phone tight and said, short because he didn’t want to listen to Gladio any more than he needed to right now, “Yes, something _happened_ Amicitia.”

Another bought of silence, and then, “I’ll be at Leville in five.” Ignis rattled off the room number and hung up. He tossed his phone back onto the dresser and leaned forward, over Noctis, and sucked in another ragged breath. He’d yell at Gladio when he arrived, and then they’d move on from there.

Ignis straightened his back, got to his feet, and began to bustle about the room. There was much still that needed to be done.

* * *

 

When Noctis woke up it was to pain. He grit his teeth and sucked in a breath and his hands spasmed toward his chest even as he curled into his side. Faintly he could hear Ignis say something, but for the moment Noctis only focused on the way his heart hurt, and the way his back screamed at him. He could almost see how his legs twitched involuntarily until the cool, touch of an elixir brushed his skin with shattered glass.

Noctis relaxed ever so slightly as the pain faded away. He turned so that he could look to Ignis who stared at him without his glasses, eyes open in naked relief.

“You’re awake,” Ignis murmured, and then collapsed back into a chair.

“Iggy?” Noctis rasped, and his throat felt parched and sore and his head hurt something fierce. He tried to recall what had happened, but the memory slipped away like sand. Ignis reached over and gave Noctis a full glass of ice water that sat at the bedside.

“Don’t push it, your Majesty,” Ignis said softly. “Let it come on its own terms.”

It took Noctis a while, where he sipped at the water and just breathed. He didn’t see Gladio anywhere, and while a part of him ached at that he knew at least Gladio was safe and alive. That was when it trickled in—Steyliff, and the sudden inexplicable shattering of his bond with Prompto. Noctis sucked in a breath and closed his eyes.

“How long?” Noctis questioned. His hands shook.

Beside him Ignis plucked the glass from his hand. “Three days, your Majesty.” Noctis swallowed, reflexively. “Take your time, Noct.”

It took Noctis a few minutes before he was able to choke out, “What happened?” because he honestly didn’t know. He knew the bond shattered—and they weren’t meant to _do_ that, really. Broken bonds due to death was one thing; this didn’t match anything he’d been told. It felt like Prompto had been _taken_ from him, not died. Like someone went and plucked at the strings of Noctis’ heart, iced one over, and then snapped it in twine.

“We don’t know,” Ignis said eventually. “One second we were fine. The next Prompto had—he touched something, and then you were—”

Noctis swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said, and then jolted in surprise when Ignis slammed his hand down.

“Don’t be! It is not your fault, Noct. It is _never_ your fault.”

Noctis pressed his lips together; he wanted to ask _wasn’t it?_ He was their _King_. He was meant to walk Tall in the face of his eventual demise, to sacrifice everything for safety of his Kingdom. His life was nothing more than a paltry sum granted by the Crystal to be taken away it its whim and the whims of the Gods and at the first sign of something _wrong_ he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.

The rest of his self-depreciative thoughts were broken before they could form in the way that Ignis reached out, grabbed him, and wrapped him in a tight hug. Noctis realized he had tears; his throat felt clogged up and he couldn’t quite breathe.

“It’ll be alright, Noct,” Ignis murmured. “Let it out, and take your time.”

Noctis shuddered. “The mythril—”

“Oh the mythril can go hang,” Ignis rumbled, “and if your next words are about Gladiolus, do not worry about it. We’ve talked, and he knows what he’s done wrong.”

Noctis frowned and mumbled, “Gladio didn’t do anything wrong,” in a confused sort of haze.

“Yes, Noctis, he did,” Ignis sighed. “We’ve discussed it.”

For a moment Noctis just curled into Ignis’ arms in the way he hadn’t done since he was a small child and they were introduced to one another. Noctis had the vaguest recollection that he’d been probably four at the time, and he could remember the utter strangeness associated with Ignis and how the older boy interacted with him, but the best part of those memories were moments like this.

After a minute Noctis asked, “He’s here?” and Ignis hummed lightly, chin rested atop Noctis’ birds nest of hair.

“Cor and Gladiolus are taking care of a problem at the power plant,” Ignis said eventually. “They should be done shortly if either one of them knows what’s good for them.” Noctis sighed. “Rest, Noct. You are still recovering.”

For a moment Noctis said nothing, but then he closed his eyes and murmured a soft, “Okay, Iggy,” and drifted back into sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2000 years ago Ardyn Lucis Caelum takes his friend of 10 years, Prompto, in search of a betrothal gift for Aera. They visit Steyliff Grove.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT FUCKED UP POSTING I'M MAD
> 
> * * *
> 
> Aaaanyway there is Aera/Ardyn because that is a tragic thing and I'm still not sure how I feel about it except that Ardyn very clearly loved her so that is...a thing. Aera is...the way she is referenced to Prompto for reasons so hush.
> 
> ALSO. YOU. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. PROMDYN? VERSDYN? OR REMAIN GEN?????? I NEED TO KNOW IT'S ALREADY TEASING THE EDGES BECAUSE, Y'KNOW, ARDYN.

Prompto stretched his arms up into the air and let out a relaxed sort of groan. He scratched at his goatee and breathed in the air and the feel of the ground beneath his feet. Half a second later and he bounced around to his chocobo ride and scratched her just under her beak.

“Such a good girl,” Prompto cheered, and then looked over to his traveling companion who was happily tending to his own bird. His lips curled into a bit of pleased smile at the sight, at how Ardyn lavished praises on his black chick with a soft voice and carefully offered greens. “You know you’re spoiling her, pretty’n’pink,” Prompto said even as he offered his own bird some greens before her turned on heel and practically danced over to the other man.

“Hush, Luna, don’t listen to the little speed daemon,” Ardyn murmured sweetly. The chocobo warked and groomed lightly at the long locks of hair which gained her a laugh.

“Oi!” Prompto practically pouted and poked Ardyn in the shoulder. “ _Rude_ , man.”

Ardyn snorted, but he made sure the tack and bridle held from where they’d put the birds up before he started into the muck of the marsh. “Are not you, yourself, always, though?” Ardyn teased back. “Pretty’n’pink, and princess, is not that what you say?”

Prompto shrugged and bumped into Ardyn teasingly. “As if it ain’t true?”

“So _crass_ ,” Ardyn laughed, but he didn’t deny Prompto’s words and Prompto took that as the win it was meant to be. Ardyn scuffed a hand through his hair and tightened his cloak about his shoulders. “Come, Silver, into the abyss we go!”

Prompto snorted. “She better _like_ this gift of yours, for the trouble we’re going through,” Prompto said under his breath and Ardyn rolled his eyes.

“Jealous, dear?”

Prompto huffed, but no he wasn’t jealous and Ardyn should know that well. Instead he sarcastically uttered, “Oracles aren’t my type, dude. Too much,” Prompto struggled for a word, and just waved his hand with an explosive, “ _muchness_.” For a moment Ardyn watched him, the genial smile on his face faded off into a faint frown, but Prompto slapped him on the shoulder and began to practically dance his way through the muck and into the overgrowth and trees.

Ardyn sighed, replaced his smile, and briskly limped after him. He said, softer, “You are still hurt by her words,” almost as if he was afraid he’d hurt Prompto more by saying that _now_. Prompto huffed out a breath and fingered the belt of knives hooked to his waist.

“Not exactly,” Prompto said. “It was a year ago anyway. I’m over it!”

Ardyn shook his head. “I am not blind, my friend,” he said. “I know her words hurt you—yet I feel in time she will warm to you, you just have to wait.”

Prompt didn’t bother to respond; Ardyn knew him well enough by now to know that Aera’s words had _hurt_. No one liked to be relegated to ‘thing’ and that was precisely what Ardyn’s bride-to-be had called Prompto upon their first meeting one year ago. Some soulless automata; created and not birthed—and Prompto frowned lightly and shook his head. What the Oracle thought didn’t matter. What Ardyn thought _did_ and so Prompto plastered on a smile and skipped ahead to look at the various stone carved columns and pillars that marked the area, bases covered in mire muck and wet earth.

Ardyn followed after Prompto with that faint, almost pleased curl to his lips while Prompto focused on the carved markings carefully etched into the stonework. His eyes grew fairly wide, and with barely a thought Ardyn pulled a stack of papers and a bit of charcoal that he handed over to the excitable blond. Prompto knew he could get sucked in when he saw something _interesting_ and this—this was _interesting_.

Ardyn leaned against the edge, careful to balance his weight as he watched Prompt scribble and read. “Something interesting, darling?”

Prompto laughed. “Define _interesting_ ,” he said, and his grin was positively infectious. “This discusses rites of passage for the _dead_ , Ardyn! The dead! Look, here, see this passage?” Prompt pointed out a barely there scribble of something that Ardyn couldn’t read. “This talks about pilgrimages that would be undertaken by funeral processions—processions that would move _miles_ and for _days_ just to bring the dead here to bury! And here—this one talks about—” Prompt squinted. “—ah, something called ‘sending’? No, that’s not right. The tenses are all off…” He chewed on his lip.

“Steyliff?” Ardyn offered, and Prompto nodded.

“Yeah, yeah that’s got to be it…” he scribbled something more and then dropped the papers into the armiger a second later. “I’ll have to go over this later, though. We’re here for _you_.”

Ardyn laughed and swung an arm around Prompto’s shoulders who _squawked_ about being suddenly smothered by a giant. Still, in a rather good mood they continued onward.

* * *

 

Solheim ruins were strange; Prompto never knew much about them when he was twenty, and the things he knew now that he was _thirty_ still left him in this small humble sort of awe and terror. Something about Steyliff boggled Prompto’s mind a little bit, even as he and Ardyn relaxed on the steps outside the closed entrance.

“Mm, I _hate_ this part,” Ardyn mumbled lazily from where he dozed in filtered spots of sunlight. The stone beneath him felt blissfully warm, and Prompto knew the warmth could very easily lull the man into slumber if he weren’t so attentive on Prompto and the scribbles he’d begun to hastily mark at the entrance.

“Yeah,” Prompto said exasperatedly. “Gil would just be yelling at us both by now about patience.”

Ardyn stretched. “Come _here_ , Silver. The ruins will keep,” Ardyn practically whined and Prompto rolled his eyes, but he dismissed the papers even as Ardyn beckoned and said softly, “ _Attend_ me.”

“You,” Prompto said wryly even as he dropped down next to Ardyn and begun to calmly tug the mans cloak off, and then the sleeves of his darker top, “are _spoiled_.”

“And you,” Ardyn hummed when Prompto began to dig his fingers into the pained points of his shoulders, “have such wonderfully gifted hands, dear Silver.”

“Princess,” Prompto snorted, and Ardyn let out a low moan at the feel of knots being worked out, and the way the hands moved down his back toward the sorest points. Prompto knew the drill well enough by now—he’d been there when Ardyn gained the injury to his back and hip, one that almost killed him if not for a timely intervention of a Phoenix Down.

“Be my Prince, then, and soothe these aches and pains of mine,” Ardyn said tiredly. Prompto sighed but did as Ardyn asked if only because he wasn’t blind and could see the toll the long trip had already taken on the other man.

For a while between them there remained silence while Prompto worked to kneed at the muscles and ease the pains of the Healer King. Ardyn dozed in the falling light of the sun, happy for the warmth of Prompto’s hands against the aches that never could leave him quite be. Eventually Ardyn began to murmur words under his breath, small offerings of conversation to somewhat fill the silence in the way Prompto used to five—ten years ago.

“How Gil must be, in Civitas Lucii, without our pleasant company to bear witness to?”

Prompto hummed. “I still think it was mean of your brother to pull him back.”

Ardyn rolled his shoulders and the curled into his right side as he gazed up at Prompto who rocked back on his thighs. For a moment Ardyn’s gaze was inscrutable as he looked at Prompto, at the tan to his cheeks and the freckles that were almost like a map in their own right. Eventually he sighed and looked away. “Som’s…insecure,” Ardyn said. “I leave him alone for so long I…” Ardyn rolled into a seated position.

“You spoil him,” Prompto said, “and this is coming from _me_.”

Ardyn chuckled and scrubbed a hand through his hair even as he tugged back on his tunic. “I raised him, my Silver. Do I not then have the right to spoil him?” Prompto watched Ardyn’s skin as the tunic came up, and breathed a faint sigh of relief when he didn’t see the Scourge make an appearance. “He favors Gil, you know,” Ardyn said after a moment, “and with the Confirmation to soon be upon us, well, I worry for Somnus.”

Prompto frowned, but Ardyn shook his head and ruffled Prompto’s own locks until the blond let out a squawk and struggled to get out. After a second they both turned their gaze toward the sun as it dipped down into dusk, and then Prompto looked to the door to Steyliff and sighed.

“We best get moving, pretty’n’pink,” Prompto said cheerfully, and helped Ardyn to his feet. “Your bride-to-be’s gift is waiting in… _that_ mess.”

Ardyn eyed the door and sighed. “Joy. More souls lost to the pits of Scourge, now await us in hungering, festering darkness.” Ardyn pulled out his blade from the armiger. “Why did I say we were to come here again?”

Prompto laughed. “That Oracle of yours likes tombs.”

“Ah, yes, my dearest Aera. The things one does for love….”

* * *

 

Prompto knelt over one of the Solheim panels in the ground with a soft hum under his breath to match Ardyn’s off-key singing. The royal haired pain in Prompto’s ass strolled around the room with his fingers latched onto the ruin walls, gaze somewhere into the middle distance whenever Prompto glanced in his direction. He seemed perfectly content to meander instead of search for whatever bauble he said existed here that the Oracle would love, and seemed quite happy to allow Prompto his moments to geek out over ancient Solheim magic and technology.

“This panel is different somehow,” Prompto eventually said when he stood back up and dismissed his half-thought sketches and drawings. He rubbed at his goatee and stepped around the small circular space in the floor.

“Oh?” Ardyn questioned. He turned and nearly toppled over when his left knee buckled, but caught himself on the wall a second later and brushed Prompto off with a wave of his hand. “Continue, Silver. I find myself curious as to what you have discovered in such a dreary old place.”

Prompto snorted. “You like these dreary places just as much as your Oracle, admit it!”

Ardyn huffed. “I do _not_.” He narrowed golden eyes in Prompto’s direction. “I am surrounded by philosophers and historians who prefer to drag me into every Six damned death trap they possibly can.”

Prompto flushed and muttered a short apology to which Ardyn just shook his head.

“Oh, precious, just tell me what you have found before it _devours_ you,” Ardyn sighed, so Prompto obliged.

“We know the panels up by the entrance works as a quick exit to these tombs,” Prompto said abruptly. “The temples, too. Is this a tomb, or a temple actually?”

“Does it matter?”

Prompto shrugged. “Not really, man, I was just curious. But yeah, those take you _out_ which is good when the suns up and the doors locked.”

Ardyn laughed. “Good old Solheim,” he said tiredly. “I wonder how often they suffered from their folly of magical locks before they ensured a route of escape?”

Prompto laughed. “Then there were the panels in the other room—they worked on some sort of loop, right?”

“Mm, distorting time itself….” Ardyn mused with the faintest keen of interest.

“Yeah, that. Now there’s this one—and it’s coloring is completely wrong compared to the others. The writing is older too, actually. See this here?” Prompto knelt back down and pointed out a few of the etchings on the panel. It took Ardyn a second to stride right back up to his guardian, but when he did he slapped a hand on Prompto’s shoulder and leaned forward to see what Prompto pointed out.

“Hm, is that supposed to be _ævi_ or _andlát?_ ” Ardyn questioned.

“Actually, I think it’s a derivative of _home_ ,” Prompto murmured. “See here? This is clearly _heim_.” Prompto gestured to a small cluster. “Then over here we have _stiltr_ , and that there is _almenniligr_ I believe.”

Ardyn blinked, then murmured as he pointed to another cluster, “Well by that reasoning this would then make the word _skjótr_ , wouldn’t it?” Beside him Prompto blinked and then vibrated in pleasant surprise.

“Yes! Yes, that makes perfect sense—so here it would be—huh,” Prompto cocked his head and blinked. “Language, I think? Something about language.”

Ardyn hummed in agreement. “I can see what you mean; this one is quite odd for a passageway for the dead, no?”

“Exactly!” Prompto slammed his fist into his palm and positively beamed up at Ardyn. “It talks about some sort of journey, travel and time and language. Something about home and control? But it doesn’t make sense in any of the context of the other panels. I’ve seen these before,” Prompto gestured toward _skjótr_ and _stiltr._ “Those are on the panels that take you from place to place. But the rest? They don’t match any of the other panels.”

Ardyn hummed to himself as he stared at Prompto whose grey-blue eyes practically glistened with curiosity, and then looked back to the panel. “I wonder…” He reached out a hand to _touch_ , the inexplicable urge just to see what the panel _did_ , when Prompto grabbed his wrist with wide eyes.

“ _Ardyn!_ ” he said sharply, a sort of pained gasp caught in his throat. “ _Don’t_ touch the strange and confusing panel from Solheim!”

Ardyn pouted and said, “I am _curious_ , my Silver.”

“We don’t know what it does!”

They stared at one another before Ardyn relented under Prompto’s wide, almost terrified stare. Instead Ardyn pulled his wrist from Prompto’s grasp and, with a hand on Prompto’s shoulder to steady himself, pushed back away from the panel with a murmured, “As you say, darling.”

Prompto breathed a sigh of relief and pushed from his crouch back to a standing position. He turned to follow after Ardyn, but his heel caught on a chink in the stone and before Prompto knew it his balance upended. Prompto let out a shout of surprise as he tripped backward, right onto the panel he just warned Ardyn away from.

The world lit up _red_ and Prompto had a second, a brief second where he saw Ardyn’s horrified face, before the world ripped away in a familiar manner and Prompto thought— _oh_. _That’s_ _what it does_ —before he crashed into the ground and smashed his head onto the hard stone enough to daze.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Concussions suck, and knowing a good friend of ten years is probably dead sucks too, but at least Prompto is home. He missed Noctis' cold-warm light.

Prompto rolled onto his side and vomited.

Clinically the signs of a concussion were there; nausea, the blinding headache and distant ringing in his ears, and—oh, he couldn’t forget this one—disorientation. Prompto had no idea _where_ he was except probably in Steyliff, and probably not anywhere near Ardyn. In fact, despite the haze of headache and deja-vu that niggled at the faint end of memory, Prompto could recall a time much like this before wherein he’d lost a tie to a Monarch and the faintest recollection that Ardyn—Ardyn would be dead in a scant few years. Prompto couldn’t really recall right now how he knew that.

Prompto breathed through his nose and shuffled away from the vomit. He tried to get to his feet, succeeded, but stumbled for a moment with his balance upended. He squinted—a light somewhere, bright and foreboding, lit up the chamber he found himself in. The Pilgrimage chamber, if he remembered right. The one under the waters of the Vesperpool that signified the path into the Beyond to ancient Solheim practices.

For a brief moment Prompto debated an elixir or potion—he kept a few in pockets on his person out of habit these days, from when he lacked the tie to the Lucis Caelum magic—but Prompto also remembered a fair few of Ardyn’s lectures on how not to treat certain injuries. Elixir’s and potions could cause more damage with a concussion, right?

“Better not risk it,” Prompto mumbled, and winced at the lights. Artificial, he noted faintly. When had he last seen artificial lights like this, so bright they drove the daemons away? He put that out of mind for the moment and glanced at the ground and—yes, the panel.

Prompto knelt and stared as best he could with vision that swam and attention that wanted to drift every which way, at the words on the panel. Perhaps he could figure out just where the blasted thing sent him—that was always an option, right? He didn’t have his notes, and something twisted in his gut at the memory that he stored them in the armiger for safe keeping, but Prompto also had an impeccable memory. He just—needed—to figure this out—

“Hey! Who the fuck are you?”

Prompto yelped and flailed forward at the sudden voice. He fought down the urge to vomit again as the nausea reared its ugly head even as he crashed on top of the panel and braced himself to be dragged away—except, not. He felt around it and frowned—the subtle hum to the thing was _gone_. Had it fully lost power? That should be fairly impossible right? Solheim was a fount of magical and technological innovations that lasted well beyond the civilizations fall. Feasibly it’d have to be thousands of years before the power source could fail to reach whole sections of tombs and temples and—

“I said who the fuck are you?!”

“Jeez, no need to yell,” Prompto groaned and rolled himself over. He squinted and tried to place the face—she wasn’t dressed in the typical armor and accoutrements Prompto had grown used to over ten years. Actually, what she wore felt vaguely familiar—like the shirt Prompto had on when he arrived in Steyliff all those years ago. Hadn’t there been a woman in the party then? What was her name? Prompto hissed between his teeth and curled forward and—yeah, no use stopping now.

Prompto threw up.

* * *

 

“Thanks,” Prompto croaked as Aranea handed him a cup of water and some saltines to chow down on. He’d vomited at least three more times after the first two, all of which happened as she dragged his dazed and concussed ass out of Steyliff and into the night sky.

The night sky looked weird to Prompto. There were less stars, more miasma in the dark then he found himself used to. Vesperpool with Ardyn had beauty at night, and while night was dangerous because of daemons there were ways to enjoy the dark without the risk. Here Aranea’s people had artificial lights so bright they hurt placed strategically around Steyliff and the Imperial dropship she rode in on.

How long had it been since he’d seen an Imperial dropship? Prompto blinked into his glass of water. He could remember traveling with Noct and Gladio and Ignis through the wilds of Leide and Cleigne. They took on hunts for the people for protection—monsters and daemons alike—and on occasion an Imperial dropship would come hurtling through and dump a series of MT’s and Prompto would scream—

_Imperial’s above us!_

—but he’d grown used to travel by just chocobo and no car. He’d grown used to not having to fear enemies from above, but rather those that snuck within the foliage. He’d grown used to fighting men and not soulless automata. Prompto wondered what this made him now; he had blood on his hands from protecting Ardyn and that—would the others like that? How long had he been gone?

Aranea huffed from where she leaned against the dropship wall while she watched Prompto fall into contemplation and sip at the water and nibble at the saltines. She let him have his peace if only because the concussion really fucked him over and she knew how concussions went. When it seemed more like Prompto was himself she sighed loudly to catch his attention.

“You mind telling me what you were doing in there?” Aranea demanded.

Prompto pursed his lips. “I…” he fumbled for his words and looked down at his hands. Then he mumbled, “Aranea,” like an epiphany hit him and Aranea blinked. She hadn’t given her name. “Aranea! Oh, that’s right.”

“Okay,” Aranea drawled, but Prompto barreled on.

“You were with us when we went searching for Mythril,” Prompto said, and his voice got this tone of wistful enthusiasm. “Called us out on our ‘shitty disguises’ and all! Fuck I can’t believe how long its been!” Prompto laughed lightly, then frowned. “Wait—how long has it been?”

Aranea frowned. “Blondie?” she questioned, and when she gained a nod that quickly turned a face green enough that Prompto stopped, Aranea sighed explosively. “Well, shit.”

“Sums it up quite nice,” Prompto muttered. “Solheim shit is fucking weird.” Prompto scrubbed at his goatee. “That fucking panel dumps you into a different time, and it’d have to be a different space too with the planet rotation to take into effect. Plus the differences in ages and then you also have to account for the language barrier that might arise—maybe that’s what the language script meant?” For a moment Prompto devolved into quiet muttering to himself before Aranea cleared her throat and he glanced back up at her sheepishly.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Aranea told him bluntly.

“Sorry.”

Aranea waved him off and slumped down with a sigh. “You’ve been missing for a week, blondie.” She watched the way he blinked, and then tilted his head in a confused sort of way that left her chuckling because yeah, this was definitely the blondie she’d met with the Prince and his entourage.

“A week? But that—perhaps the temporal displacement is not entirely accurate?” Prompto mumbled. “What could interfere with that mechanic of the system though? Or perhaps it’s the rotation—needs to be in the right rotation to drop you off at the right space?” Aranea cleared her throat again and Prompto flushed pink.

“Your boys are going to be pickled pink to know you’re not dead,” Aranea told him, then paused. “I’d tell ‘em, but I lack their numbers.”

Prompto sighed. “No trouble. They’re probably already in Altissia.”

Aranea scoffed. “Last I heard they were still in Lestallum, and that was a day ago. Stopped looking for Mythril after you up and vanished.”

That surprised Prompto, he fiddled with the cup in his hands and his head down. He’d spent time getting over his insecurities with Gil and Ardyn, but the thought of Noct and the others—they were his _best friends_ —upset that he vanished? Upset enough that they put their plans on hold? Prompto couldn’t fathom it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you to the city proper so you can search them out,” Aranea said. “I’ve been scouring this place for Mythril as an apology.”

Prompto scrubbed a hand over his face. “Don’t bother. I’ve got plenty.” Without thought he dipped his mental fingers into the armiger and tugged out three glittering pieces of mythril to show off. He banished them back into the familiar cold blue of Noct’s magic, and then froze stiff a second later. He could feel Noct’s magic. He could feel _Noct_. _He could access Noct’s armiger!_ Ten years and Prompto missed the cold warmth of Noctis, the way it suffused through him and nestled near his heart. He found some solace with Ardyn, but the feel of them were like night and day. Noctis burned cold, but bright, like a nice breeze in the summer time that came off a fishing dock. Ardyn burned _hot_ , like the comfort of the sun on a lounge chair and the heat of the desert but in the way that wasn’t stifling.

A second later Prompto realized he could still feel _Ardyn’s_ magic nestled next to Noct’s and that—that left him breathless. Ardyn should be dead two-thousand years over and the magic gone, but it rested there like a fresh bond; Noct’s too felt new and fresh and _whole_. It felt like the Oaths he’d taken had dropped into the void, and then slammed back home where they belong the minute he paid attention to it. Prompto breathed in heavily and forced the panic away, well aware of Aranea’s attention on him.

“I’ll pay you in Mythril if you take me to Lestallum,” Prompto said as he pushed aside thoughts of _Ardyn_ and _why_ , and instead reached mental fingers into Noct’s side of the magic and tugged out his phone. “And don’t’ worry about telling the guys; I’ve got Iggy’s number.”

* * *

 

They agreed to meet at a neutral location on Ignis’ demand, and Prompto couldn’t blame them. He could remember how paranoid the Nifs made them; how hunted Noctis and them were for the mere fact that they survived the destruction of Insomnia. Prompto could remember it more like a dream, something that happened for a few short months ten years ago. Prompto’s weariness and paranoia stemmed from more immediate threats that he discovered in the past. Bandits on the road were always a concern, and daemons at night—and then there were the Scourge infected, half-turned or ill and the dangers they represented themselves.

Neutral ground really was best for the first meeting since the mess in Steyliff.

Prompto hopped off the bird he’d rented from where Aranea dropped him off and scratched just under her beak. He murmured a soft goodbye for the time being and turned around to look at Old Lestallum and sigh. They said the Crows Nest for a start, and honestly Prompto could do with a bite of food anyway so he turned toward the restaurant and jogged across the street.

The dinner didn’t have a lot of patrons today, probably due to the grey clouds hanging overhead, which suited Prompto just fine. He headed up to the counter and softly ordered some ‘Kenny’s Fries’, reached into Noct’s armiger, and tugged out the required gil from underneath the counter.

“Thanks!” Prompto cheered, turned around, and plopped himself down into one of the booths furthest away from the tipster to wait. With happy aplomb Prompto dumbed the fries into a mixture of ranch and ketchup and began to chow down with a closed eye groan of happiness. He _missed_ fries. He missed Iggy’s cooking too.

Gods above Prompto missed a lot of things that he carefully stuffed away in the back of his mind these past ten years and—he struggled to stop himself from crying. Outside he could hear the Regalia purr into the parking space and the doors open. One of them slammed, and he could hear faint voices—someone yelling, Prompto thought, as he set his fries down and looked up.

For half-a-second Prompto saw a head of dark hair that he never thought he’d see again. It was messier than he was used to, and the slate blue eyes were brighter than he remembered, but time and distance often warped memory. Slowly Prompto slid out of the booth and stood to his feet, where Noctis turned and stared at him with wide eyes—and the next thing Prompto knew he felt the familiar cold-warmth of Noct’s light burst in his chest. Noctis wrapped arms around Prompto and hugged him close and—yeah, Prompto could feel the tears.

“H-Hey, buddy,” Prompto said, and his own voice trembled just a bit. “Miss me?”

* * *

 

Cor stared, and he couldn’t exactly help it because here was the one-year-old brat he’d dragged back to Insomnia some nineteen years previously, and fuck the kid wasn’t twenty anymore. The little blond monkey had new scars that Cor knew he hadn’t seen the last time he was with these boys, back at Keycatrich, and a goatee that took work beyond a few scant months. Cor knew full well that the boy didn’t even have the beginnings of facial hair yet so the goatee shouldn’t be a _thing_ and fuck, of course Noctis and his retinue would get up to more insane bullshit than Regis ever tried.

He’d seen a lot, being part of Mors guard, and then shuffled off to Regis when Mors died. Cor saw too much sometimes; things that involved dead ghosts with honor-bound oaths that still roam the earth. The Blademaster had to be one of the most terrifying discovers of his life even if he blundered it under bravado, spite, fury, and a recklessness that really should’ve killed him long ago. To see Prompto now, to see the age worn on him, it felt like he’d stepped into one of Clarus’ fictional novels the bastard loved so much.

Cor hated to think it, but it also hurt how Ingis and Gladiolus worked to keep Noctis as far away from Prompto as possible. He wondered if he could see the blatant hurt that crossed the blonds face, the way his brows tilted down and his eyes grew a bit glassy. All this arguing and posturing started to get on his nerves, too. He wanted to punch something, or kill something—maybe take another stab at that bastard Blademaster—and those were dangerous thoughts in times like these so Cor breathed in deep, then breathed out, and stepped between the two groups before this argument got out of hand.

Instantly Ignis quieted and Prompto glanced to Cor. Cor eyed the way the boy straightened up and stood tall, and then looked over to Ignis and Gladiolus who were trying to keep Noctis from even so much as looking at the ‘stranger’ in their midst.

“Let me get a few things straight,” Cor said, and they kept attention raptly on him. “You claim that ten years have passed,” he looked to Prompto who nodded sharply. “We,” he looked to Ignis and Noctis and Gladiolus, “know that Prompto disappeared in the middle of Solheim ruins roughly one week ago.”

“One week, seven hours, fifteen minutes,” Ignis rattled off, and then flushed pink at the way Prompto gaped at him. “I was…” Ignis pursed his lips and looked away.

“Right,” Cor continued as if Ignis hadn’t displayed all of the weird shit that came with being the Hand of the King. Wesk used to do the same weirdness, once upon a time. If Cor hadn’t known Wesk to not have any kids, or interest in kids, or interest in _women_ , or even a family then Cor might’ve questioned Ignis being a Scientia in the first place. Still he pressed on and glanced between the two.

“When Prompto disappeared your Majesty you said it felt like the bond broke?” Cor asked, and he saw the way Prompto went pale in understanding.

“Yeah,” Noctis said from behind Gladiolus, then grunted when Gladiolus pushed him back. “Except also not? It was weird, Cor, okay? Like something just…took it—but it’s back now! It’s back, and I can feel—it’s _back…_.” Noctis’ voice broke faintly and Prompto grit his teeth and looked away.

“Noct…” Ignis muttered, but he didn’t turn around to comfort, and normally Cor would applaud the caution but now it felt just—stupid.

Cor sighed. “Right. Prompto?”

Prompto perked up. “Yes?”

“Show me your wrist.”

The room went deadly silent. Ignis glanced to Gladiolus, who shrugged and shook his head in confusion. Cor spared them only the briefest of glances before he returned his gaze solely to Prompto who froze, eyes wide. After a second one hand hesitantly went and grasped at Prompto’s right wrist, where the glove went up to cover half way onto the forearm. Prompto eyed Cor warily, lips pressed together as he breathed in slowly.

“Y-You know about that?” Prompto asked, voice soft and more timid than he’d heard out of the other man all day. Cor massaged the bridge of his nose.

“Yes, I know,” Cor said, then glanced at the group, then back to Prompto. Fuck it—at this rate keeping the whole mess a secret was worthless. Regis wasn’t King anymore, that fell to Noctis’ shoulders now, and secrets were messy and frustrating anyway. “I’m the one who brought you into Insomnia, Prompto.”

From the royal trio there was a stiffened spine and a hissed _what_ and Prompto seemed to swallow heavily on his side. Cor could hear Noctis fighting with Gladiolus to get around and demand answers, but Ignis helped to contain the young King which was fine for now. Cor stepped up to Prompto.

“You know what it is?” Prompto asked.

“I do,” Cor said softly. “I can tell you more, but right now I need to see it.” Prompto chewed on his lip, then nodded, and carefully began to pull off his glove. Cor breathed a sigh of relief and snatched the wrist before Prompto could cover it with his other hand and began to study the barcode intensely.

_N-iP01357 – 05953234_

Cor breathed out heavily and let the wrist drop. “Alright.” He looked to Prompto and said, softly, “Thank you.” Prompto nodded slowly once and carefully tugged his glove back on to cover the mark. He refused to look at Cor which—okay, fine, Cor could deal with that. It wasn’t like Prompto was his brat, even if he’d snuck a check up on him frequently over the years after the kid got adopted into the Argentum household.

Cor turned and faced the three blockheads who finally stopped fighting with one another and stared, waiting, for Cor to say something or anything. Noctis had finally wormed his way to the front and had a bright scowl on his face, Ignis sported a bruise on his cheek, and it looked like Gladio got nicked by a blade of some sort. Cor wanted to mutter _kids_ under his breath and wondered if this was how Regis felt all those years ago when fifteen year old Cor got pulled into being part of Mors’ guard.

Instead Cor uttered, “It’s him,” to the boys and watched how Ignis went slack and Gladiolus looked ready to protest, but both didn’t stop Noctis from the jump forward to wrap Prompto back into a hug. Cor sighed as Ignis stepped close to him, eyes wide with barely repressed hope.

“A-Are you sure, Marshal?” Ignis asked and Cor glanced to where Prompto laughed and Noctis had basically squirreled the thirty year old man onto one of the beds, commandeered him as a pillow, and began to play Kings Knight on his phone with Prompto.

“A hundred percent,” Cor said eventually and Ignis looked ready to question that further until Gladiolus slapped the man on the shoulder and smiled tiredly.

“Go cuddle with the kids, Iggy,” Gladiolus said, graced the hard stare of Ignis with aplomb, and then watched how Ignis carefully approached the duo on the bed before Noctis dragged him down and they became a trio.

Cor glanced to Gladiolus who settled down into one of the chairs on the caravan and pulled out two bottles of booze from the armiger. Cor frowned, accepted one, and dropped into the other chair even as he said, “You know that is for storing weaponry and curatives, not alcoholic beverages.”

“Pff, like you guys didn’t do the same,” Gladiolus rumbled and Cor snorted. They both watched the three with equal parts fondness and Gladiolus with more regret than the man should have, but then Cor received the dressing down from Ignis just the same and that—that kind of stung.

Perhaps, Cor realized with a bitter thought, he hadn’t gotten over his impulsiveness as much as he’d like now in his forties. Not if he happily brought Gladiolus to the point of potential death and—yeah, he deserved the dressing down even if it came from a kid half his age. Cor sighed and sipped at the beer for a moment, felt himself relax into the sound of laughter and Ignis’ soft scolding or questions about _why are your clothes in such terrible states of disarray, Prompto?_

Eventually Gladiolus brought up what was on his mind. “The barcode?” he said, and kept his voice pitched low so that the squealing Prompto couldn’t hear him, nor Noctis over the sounds of sudden tickling and protests as Ignis demanded all of Prompto’s clothes so that he could repair them appropriately.

Cor glanced to Gladiolus. “You know about that?”

“Saw it once or twice.”

Cor nodded, and said, “Yeah. The barcode.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto breaks the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I work 5 days a week, at a hospital, so it's hard for me to write afterward as I'm typically exhausted. On top of that my dog's health took a turn for the worse last week and I could barely focus without thinking of her and the state she was in. Unfortunately I had to let her go last night; she wasn't even capable of really standing anymore.

Prompto woke with the dawn and carefully extracted himself from the pile of Noctis and Ignis on the caravan bed. Ignis rolled over and grumbled something, half on the way to waking, before Prompto tugged the blankets up and nudged the fully snoring Noctis into wrapping himself around Ignis like an octopus. It made Prompto smile—must be a Lucis Caelum trait, then, to be clingy in their sleep. The other bed Prompto noticed was empty, and really it didn’t surprise him.

There were vague recollections of Gladio up in the pre-dawn light of a Haven, and Prompto pegged the Marshal as someone who probably got up ridiculously early like, or ridiculously late like Noctis. Hell Prompto wouldn’t be surprised if the man shifted between both—waking early when out in the field, waking late when in the safety of home—but that was neither here nor there. Instead Prompto stretched and knocked open the door of the caravan to step outside and look up to the sky and breathe in the air.

It didn’t smell as fresh.

Off to the side around the table and chairs that settled outside of the caravan Cor glanced up from his beer and arched an eyebrow in Prompto’s direction in surprise. He took a look sip, then said, “You’re up early.”

Prompto glanced over and grinned. “Had to be, otherwise the Princess would never get his ass outta bed.”

Gladio slapped a hand across Prompto’s shoulder, footsteps loud on the gravel as he approached. He leaned over and eyed Prompto with some skepticism. “Princess?”

Prompto snorted and took the offered beer as Gladio shuffled him over to sit at the table with Cor. “Yeah, well, I refused to call him _Healer King_ like everyone else,” Prompto said wryly. “I figured since he was such a spoiled Princess, why not call him what he was?” At Cor’s raised eyebrow Prompt sighed explosively. “He and his Shield found me wandering the Vesperpool,” Prompto continued, voice quieter. “I traveled with them for ten years.”

“Lucis Caelum?” Gladio asked, surprised. “I don’t remember a Healer King.”

Prompto shrugged. “His family ruled a portion Civitas Lucii, but there wasn’t a Lucis as far as I could get him to explain.” Prompto fingered the beer for a moment then said, softer, “I think he hoped to build one, someday, but….”

Cor sucked in a sharp breath and said, “You met the Founder King. The Mystic.”

For a moment Prompto didn’t say anything, and then murmured a soft, “Maybe….” He’d never heard of the words ‘Founder King’ or ‘Mystic’ to describe Ardyn before. Almost everyone called him ‘Healer’ or ‘Healer King’ or some derivative of. Heck there wasn’t really a Kingdom at the time, more of an idea, and even that wasn’t implemented beyond a few city states because no one wanted a repeat of Solheim. Instead the populace seemed mostly ready to wait until someone had been given the Divine Right to Rule by the Astrals—and who better than Ardyn who waded through the muck to commune with the People?

Prompto shook his head to rid himself of the thoughts because they lead to the reminder that Ardyn’s magic was still _there_ and the feeling that Prompto had forgotten something _important_. It’d been ten years, he’d long given up the idea that he’d ever return to see the guys again, so he was bound to forget something somewhere. Instead Prompto looked out at the sunrise over Old Lestallum and felt his fingers itch for some charcoal and paper.

Prompto stood and set his untouched beer down. “I need to get some paper,” he said and moved to excuse himself. Gladio and Cor watched him leave for the market, and he waited until he was hidden away in a corner of the store before he sucked in a breath and steeled himself. He eyed the sketchbooks and the pencils with a faint frown, then _reached_ for that fire-warmth of Ardyn’s magic and hoped, _prayed_ , the materials were still there.

A second later Prompto blinked to find the sheet of papers he used to sketch in one hand, a stick of charcoal in the other, and smiled. With a whistled tune Prompto grabbed a drink off of the counter—Ebony, the can read—and handed over the gil needed before he took a step back outside. He dropped the can into the armiger—Noct’s armiger—and stuffed the charcoal into one pocket while he flipped through the old sketches with a soft smile.

Stuck as he was, disconnected from Noct’s magic as he was, Prompto found himself adrift without the ability to take a photograph of a scene. A part of him itched to snapshot iconic moments throughout the ten years and it was thanks to Ardyn that Prompto even attempted to sketch out something he saw once when the man commented on his _artistic eye_. Gil had gifted him the ream of papers and the charcoal sticks with which he made his art from and he rewarded both them of them with full portraiture’s of each in the dawnlight.

Eventually Prompto came to the last sketch he worked on, of Ardyn lounged amongst trees with Aera at his side. Prompto had planned to gift that to the man on his wedding day, and his smile turned a bit sour at the thought that he’d never get the chance to even _see_ it now. Ardyn probably would’ve been radiant, and his bride-to-be as well from what Prompto could tell. He carefully tucked that sketch away into his clothes, and then frowned when he saw a new one he hadn’t made underneath the portrait of Aera and Ardyn.

Prompto stopped in the middle of his walk back to the caravan and turned the paper around in his hands to view the image at various angles in surprise. That—that _was_ his face, wasn’t it? Except the hairline looked off—unless his hair had begun to recede, and Prompto had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror last night and it _hadn’t_ —and the clothes were ridiculous. They looked like some sort of robe-like armor thing that Gil might’ve enjoyed; something inspired by Solheim. After a second Prompto shifted the paper aside and raised his eyebrows at another new sketch.

A dozen of the strange sketches that Prompto never made, hidden away in Ardyn’s armiger, flashed through Prompto’s hands until he came across one that was far more familiar than had any right. It was _him_ , ten years younger, with an arm slung around Noctis’ shoulder in what was undoubtedly Lestallum’s market. He couldn’t even remember the moment that this happened, except he had a good idea that it _had_ because he’d done the motion so often it felt like breathing in a piece of memory in sepia. Prompto swallowed heavily, rolled the papers up, and stuffed them into one of his inner pockets that typically held more knives and some crossbow bolts for when he needed them.

Briskly Prompto made his way back over to Cor and Gladio, snagged his still untouched beer, and popped the top off. Without so much as a greeting he began to chug it down because _what the fuck?_ Who drew him and Noctis? Him? And who was that other man that shared his features? Prompt didn’t know but it gnawed at him like something forgotten, a dream or a nightmare from ten years ago and he didn’t like it. He didn’t—

—Prompto gagged and spat out a mouthful of the beer and settled it down.

“Hey!” Gladio snapped, face full of affront as Prompto rubbed at his mouth. “Don’t waste the good stuff!”

“You call that _good?_ ” Prompto choked out, and Gladio grumbled good naturedly but he succeeded in the distraction and Prompto could’ve _kissed_ him for it because—he didn’t want to think about what the sketches could mean. Instead he looked over to Cor who had a hand out with a camera in it and a wry smile.

Hesitantly Prompt reached out to take the camera, partially confused until he realized he _recognized_ it. This was _his_ , wasn’t it?

“You look like you wanted a picture,” Cor said by way of explanation and Prompto mumbled his thanks. He’d forgotten about the camera, so used to sketching these days, and thumbed the device on.

A second later Prompto dropped it with numb fingers and a hitch in his breath as it _hit him_ just what he’d forgotten. The camera smashed into the ground and the screen cracked over a smugly smiling _Ardyn Izunia_ except Prompto could recognize now what he couldn’t in a face ten years younger and not yet ravaged by Scourge. _Ardyn Izunia_ and _Ardyn Lucis Caelum_ were the same man and _somehow_ he was still alive and kicking—and working for Niflheim. The little bit of Ardyn’s magic warmed in Prompto’s chest, but it didn’t stop him from feeling sick because _Ardyn was alive_ —

—and he looked like utter _shit_.

* * *

 

The one thing Gladio had not anticipated his day to go after a week of Prompto being presumed dead, it was the events he found himself in witness to now. He bet even Ignis couldn’t have predicted this, and Ignis was terrifyingly good at predicting the outcome of things. Gladio couldn’t be certain what about this entire debacle was frightening more—the fact that Cor was actually red faced and tearing into them as a collective, or the fact that Prompto was still pale-sick and looked to be on the verge of _screaming_.

“—believe how _little you paid attention!_ ” Cor snapped out and turned away from Ignis who had his mouth dropped open and seemed to struggle with his own words and Gladio dragged his attention back to the dressing down they were all getting. “This was your _job_ Ignis! You were meant to be aware of _all potential political threats—”_

“He’s not really a political threat,” Prompto mumbled to himself and Gladio glanced at him.

“The Chancellor of Niflheim is _not a political threat?!_ ” Cor demanded, and whirled onto Prompto who stared back and a small part of Gladio just felt glad it wasn’t _him_ this time.

“He’s not the fucking Chancellor of Niflheim!” Prompto snapped, and then shook his head and grit his teeth. “I mean he is but— _fuck_.”

Noctis, dazed and on the bed, not quite certain what all the yelling even was _about_ except that it had something to do with Ardyn, piped up tiredly, “He was helpful, if weird,” only to be cut off by Cor who narrowed his gaze onto Prompto and Gladio winced.

“If he’s not the fucking _Chancellor of Niflheim_ who helped _fucking invade Insomnia_ , then _who the fuck is he, Prompto?!_ ” Cor demanded, and his breath was sharp as the room went dead silent for a moment.

After a second Prompto seemed to steel his spine, and Six Gladio had to give it to the scrawny ass blond—kid grew some big fucking balls to stand up to a pissed off Cor. Gladio had enough stories growing up of the times Cor blew his top, most of them centered around either his dad or the King, and it was enough to drive him with a healthy sense of dead of pissing off the Marshal. Still, the next words out of Prompto’s mouth felt like a horrible punch to his gut, and the sound of crystal glass in _the wrong color_ , and the weapon in Prompto’s hand made him feel just the slightest bit sick.

“His name is Ardyn Lucis Caelum,” Prompto said, and in his hand lay a very old style of crossbow thankfully not really aimed at anyone, but cradled gently, “Healer King, and to me just yesterday the dumb fuck who was tempted to touch some ancient Solheim bullshit that transported _my ass_ through time.”

Cor swallowed heavily and stared for a long, long moment at the crossbow and Gladio wanted to cry because _how was this their life?_ Seriously? The creepy bastard with an uncomfortable interest in his would-be King was _related_ to the lazy bastard, and apparently Prompto was Oathbound to _both_. This wasn’t even touching the fact that apparently the Chancellor helped with the Invasion if Cor was to be believed which—what the _fuck_ , man. Gladio wanted to cry.

Noctis thankfully broke up the silence, horrified that it was, with a tired, “So he’s my Uncle? Cool. Can I go back to sleep now?” and when no one told him _no_ Noctis promptly rolled over, grabbed the blankets and pillows, and promptly dropped back off into sleep. Gladio envied Noctis in that moment, the way the black haired young man could just drop off without so much a by-your-leave.

Five minutes they stared at one another in silence before Cor spoke up again, this time much quieter as he regarded the slumbering King, “Explain.”

Gladio watched how Prompto bowed his head, but he did as Cor bade and began to talk. The words were just as crazy as the first few out of Prompto’s mouth before and made Gladio question if he were even dreaming. First the lazy Prince became the lazy King, then the Gods started to walk the earth and make demands, and Gladio had to push Noctis’ ass forward—and now this. He stepped away to fight an Immortal who was said to kill the unworthy, to prove himself the Chosen Shield of the Chosen King—not that he believed much of that tripe anyway, it just made for a good story or so he _thought_ until Ignis ripped him a new one—to learn Prompto _died_ except Prompto hadn’t died, he’d been transported through time by some magical ancient bullshit.

The more Prompto spoke, the more Gladio felt like the world had been stopped on its axis and the rug of reality pulled out from underneath him. He thought the Blademaster had been a terrifying mess to deal with, but it was his choice and he’d been told since he was a child how he was the Chosen Shield to the Chosen King—and he needed to prove it to himself, damn the consequences—but Prompto had it made for shitty life stories right from the start.

“Scourge?” Ignis interrupted, only once, and the sharp look Prompto gave him quieted the man down a second later.

Gladio wanted to know what Cor thought of this all as Prompto continued to talk, but the Marshal kept his face inscrutably unreadable throughout the entire story until Prompto ended it. Of course he pulled out display after display to prove his claim of who Ardyn Izunia really _was_ , as if the very obvious connection to another armiger and magic tied only into the Lucis Caelum line weren’t _proof enough_.

“He’s sick?” Cor asked, and it was the first words to come out of his mouth for the full explanation, but Prompto nodded.

“It’s…he wasn’t well when I left,” Prompto said. “We knew he wasn’t well. The Confirmation was supposed to _help_ , and it was in two months. After which he’d marry the Oracle and with that magical tie it should’ve…eased the burden.” Prompt fingered the crossbow with a frown on his face and his lips pressed thin.

Cor frowned. “How is he sick?”

Prompto shrugged and murmured, “He said it was like a thousand voices screaming in his head. The Scourge it—” Prompto grimaced. “If you’ve ever seen a person in the process of turning you would understand,” eventually Prompto said with a heavy sigh. “The amount of that shit Ardyn willingly exposed himself to, just to help random _people_.” He set the crossbow down and scrubbed a hand across his face. “Gil and I swore to each other that we wouldn’t leave him alone,” Prompto said into his hands. “We didn’t want to think what would happen if one of us weren’t there to distract him on the bad days.”

Some part of Prompto’s gaze grew innumerably old, even as Ignis settled down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Ignis spoke softly, even as Cor stood there with his arms still crossed and his face still unreadable, “You make it sound as if this sickness was _sentient_.”

Prompto laughed, a bitter sort of broken sound that Gladio never wanted to hear again. He turned his head away from the sight of a thirty-year-old Prompto with _tears_ and tried to think of something to keep his attention on even as Prompto said, “It _is_. You’ve seen it.”

Perhaps Gladio could tend to one of his blades, but which one? The large two-handed behemoth that he started out with, or maybe the thinner blade Masamune they found when wandering around Leide?

“We have?” Ignis questioned.

Prompto sucked in a horribly stuttered breath as Gladio decided upon the Genji Blade, as he hadn’t had the chance to go over the weapon that had once been Cor’s before the man lost it to the Blademaster. He thrust the mental equivalent of his hand into he armiger with the intent to drag out the Genji Blade and his cleaning materials, even as Prompto said, “Where do you think daemons come from?” which gave Gladio enough pause to turn with wide eyes onto Prompto, scabbard of the Genji Blade in hand as he stared at the man with wide eyes.

“Wait— _what?!_ ”

Prompto looked between all three of them somewhat bewildered as he said, “Wait, you guys don’t know? I just thought you never told me…” and Gladio wanted to throttle someone because _what the fuck was Prompto talking about now?!_ Cor even looked pale and sick in the way he stumbled backward and slumped into he wall of the caravan.

Gladio set the Genji Blade down before he dropped on his ass, and then dropped into a chair with a hissed, “What the _fuck_ ,” as Ignis quickly explained to Prompto that _no_ , they had _no idea_ that daemons were a result of apparently an illness that affected _people_. If they did they would’ve taken far more precaution in fighting the fucking things and Gladio had to agree with that. He felt like he needed a shower for ten years just to get all of the now imagined infectious daemon guts off of his skin.

Eventually Gladio muttered, “I think I’m going to be sick,” as he ducked his face into his knees. He missed the way Prompto looked to him, or when Prompto got to his feet to touch the back of Gladio’s neck. He didn’t miss the way those fingers froze, and then almost seemed to dig into the back of Gladio’s neck in a subconscious twitch. He acknowledged that with a grunt as he raised his head to get a good look at the blond who stared at the Genji Blade in confusion and—Gladio decided that _no_ , he didn’t want to _know_.

Instead Gladio said, “Ask Cor,” before Prompto could even voice the words stuck in his throat because yeah, Gladio was completely out of fucks to give and revelations for the day. Too much; just, _too much_. He shrugged himself out from under Prompto’s arm and headed for the shower instead because— _too much_.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis wants to fish, and Ardyn takes a moment to get a bit of a breather and enjoy Atissa before it's inevitably destroyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just discovered the Dungeon up by Insomnia and JESUS FUCK ITS A MAZE. In other words: New Game+ is fun and I'm enjoying the chance to just chill and actually fucking fish.

“We’re going fishing.”

Noctis wanted nothing more than to spend a few hours on a dock with tackle and rod in hand, and not think about the revelations from the past twenty-four hours when he finally got out of bed. Without so much of a by-your-leave he dragged a somewhat bemused Prompto out of the caravan and over to the Regalia to help him go through the armiger for his fishing supplies, and left the rest of his overbearing guard to stay inside and argue amongst themselves over _whatever_.

“What are you hoping to catch this time?” Prompto asked as Noctis pulled out several rods and reels, and there was one among the set Prompto had not yet seen which brought a smile to Noctis’ face even as he didn’t answer Prompto’s question because he didn’t _know_ yet. He tilted the new rod and reel toward Prompto as an offer to inspect instead as he went through his other sets calmly.

The _Mind Breaker_ had been a gift from his dad when Noctis first showed an interest in fishing, but it wasn’t entirely cut out for really catching anything of a decent size. Noctis carefully set the rod aside and perused his others while Prompto made some sort of appreciative noise about the _Death Spin_ that he’d purchased up in the Vesperpool.

“Where’d you get this?” Prompto asked as Noctis who eyed the _Hell Blaster_ that he’d bought on a whim. It was _decent_ but he felt he could do better for the river he planned to take everyone to.

“Got it up in the Vesperpool,” Noctis said. He looked over the _Butterfly Edge_ and _Air Stagger_ next. _Air Stagger_ he’d bought for himself before he left Insomnia, and it’d been a good companion since they started this trip out into the world at large. He left that rod out and contemplated the _Butterfly Edge_. It helped originally when they visited the Rachsia Bridge spot, which was were Noctis planned to take them now, but he felt like he’d long grown past it. Calmly Noctis sent the _Butterfly Edge_ back into the armiger. “There’s a tackle shop up there with some nice rods and reels.”

Prompto hummed and set _Death Spin_ down and picked up the reel next. Noctis smiled as he looked over the _Nereid_ that he bought to work primarily with _Death Spin_ but it fit neatly onto any of his other rods just as easily. Noctis himself looked over his reel selections carefully. He set the _Menkar_ back, since that was another gift from his dad. The _Acubens_ that he purchased with the _Hell Blaster_ he placed back into the armiger.

“And this?” Prompto raised up the _Nereid_ for inspection and Noctis hummed in response. “Same place?”

“Yup.”

Noctis wondered if he should take the _Fomalhaut_ or the _Galatea_ with him this time. The _Fomalhaut_ had been his staple in fishing; he found the reel to be sturdy and smooth when he made a pull against the fish. Of course, there were drawbacks when he found larger, and larger prey to play with, but overall it was a good and stable reel. The _Galatea_ Noctis hadn’t had much of a chance to use just yet; he’d bought this one to work specifically with _Butterfly Edge,_ but he found it also worked rather well with _Air Stagger_ too. It helped that it had a much stronger set of gears compared to the _Fomalhaut_ , and it reeled a lot smoother than Noctis had anticipated the first few times he tried it.

There was also the _Nereid_ to consider but Noctis felt like the _Nereid_ was more suitable against unusual opponents and he didn’t _plan_ to run into any unusual opponents. Not like the rumors of that _Pink Jade Gar_ he’d heard hidden away up in the caverns. _That_ was a fish Noctis looked forward to fighting with, but he hadn’t the right lure just yet—he’d find it somewhere. Eventually Noctis put away the _Nereid_ and left out the _Fomalhaut_ and _Galatea_ to choose from when they reached the spot.

“Are you planning to fish with a rod in each hand?” Prompto asked as he eyed the two rods and reels Noctis set onto the hood of the Regalia.

Noctis laughed, “Don’t be silly, Prompto,” and pulled out the tackle box from the armiger. “Now help me choose the lures we’re going to use.”

Prompto came up and peered at the box from Noctis’ shoulder and asked, voice light, “Where are we going?”

“Over to the bridge up the road,” Noctis said. “You remember the place, right?”

Prompto hummed and fingered the _Galatea_ and said, “You bought this one there, right?” and Noctis rewarded him with a wide, pleased smile that Prompto even _remembered_. This was why Prompto was his best friend, because the other guy _listened_ to Noctis’ ramblings. He even paid close attention to the lures that Noctis carefully organized by type. It helped that Prompto didn’t push Noctis to do anything he wasn’t comfortable or ready for, either, and that he noticed when Noctis was down and then began to be extra silly just to get a laugh out of the dark-haired Prince.

Noctis felt he didn’t deserve Prompto, and he thanked the Six every day that the blond stayed in his life.

Prompto picked out the _Popppeck: Chocobo_ which Noctis hummed as a decision; there were plenty of Dace to fish in the river so that was a fair choice. Noctis grabbed the _Deadly Waters: Sahagin_ since there were Zipper Barramundi and Noctis wanted to beat his record of the last Zipper Barramundi he’d caught. The _Bomber: Bomb_ was added to the pile of lures given the few types of Bass in the area that would be attracted to it, and Prompto picked out the last lure—the _Hot Breather: Green Dragon_ which earned him another happy smile.

“You remembered!” Noctis said, even as he dismissed the tackle box.

“Duh,” Prompto laughed. “How could I forget?”

Noctis gathered up the four lures and handed them over to Prompto for safe keeping even as he settled the two rods and lures into the back of the Regalia. He glanced to the caravan to note that the rest of the party still weren’t there and then huffed. “Go get in,” Noctis told Prompto and briskly walked back to the caravan to get Gladio, Ignis, and even Cor to get their asses in gear. They couldn’t afford to really rent the caravan for much longer anyway—not with the need to purchase gas, too, which reminded Noctis that he and Ignis needed to go over the party finances again.

In the caravan some sort of argument seemed to have continued without Noctis present, and he sighed tiredly even as he stood as tall as he could—not something entirely easy when it pulled on his spine and along the mottled nest of scars at his back—and placed his hands on his hips as he looked everyone over with an arched eyebrow. He _told_ them they were going fishing. This quiet disregard for his command would not stand.

“Well?” Noctis said dryly, and almost immediately he watched how Ignis began to put away the various cooking utensils back into the armiger without so much as an acknowledgement. Noctis expected nothing less from his Hand. Gladio’s slower movement to put the Genji Blade away made Noctis roll his eyes, because his Shield was never far enough away with the mark of his disapproval for Noctis’ decisions to put side duty for the enjoyment of fishing, but the man could at least keep quiet about all of that.

Cor stood firm, arms crossed over his chest as he stared Noctis down and refused to budge, which Noctis met with narrowed, almost glowing slate-colored eyes. He would not be refused in this, as much as he knew Cor wanted to stay behind and talk and _talk_ and that would, ultimately, get them nowhere. When Cor looked about ready to open his mouth and argue his point Noctis spoke up instead.

“We can talk at the fishing dock,” Noctis said sharply. “I am in no mood to listen to more arguing, or complaints, or what anyone think is best inside this caravan. We need the gil, and I want to fish—so we are going to fish, we are going to enjoy the fresh air, and we will talk _only when I have my rod in hand and a fish on the hook_. Is that understood?”

For a moment Cor said nothing, then sighed and uncrossed his arms with a mumbled, “Understood, Your Majesty.”

Noctis nodded his head, turned around, and headed back out to the Regalia assured that Cor would listen this time if only because he put his metaphorical foot down. Once outside Noctis breathed out a sigh of relief and let the tension bleed from his shoulders. He slouched down and made his way over to the car and to Prompto and let the smile tug at his face again. He hated when he needed to be all firm and annoyed at people—it took too much work.

* * *

 

Ardyn sipped at his can of Ebony from the dockside seating on Maahgo’s, one leg crossed over one another as he watched people move back and forth and the Gondola’s drift across the water’s surface. It felt peaceful, one of the few moments of true peace Ardyn found himself in, in the past thirty years. He hummed softly, hat settled down on the table and scarf curled around it, dressed as down as he could get while the sun still shone in the sky. He perused the menu for a moment longer and then snapped it shut and slid it over toward the edge in wait.

“I do not understand this pointless exercise,” Ravus muttered disdainfully from across him, stiff as a board and lips pressed thin even as he carefully placed aside his own menu.

“Take in the sights, boy,” Ardyn said with a wave of his hand. “Breath the fresh scent of the sea in. _Relax_.” He rolled his golden eyes and gave Ravus a thin-lipped smile. “It is rare to have such moments of peace, no?”

For a moment Ravus said nothing and looked off to the side, and then reluctantly he admitted, “It is,” and very, very slowly relaxed his shoulders. Ardyn hummed in approval and turned his gaze back over the water. “You do realize this isn’t a restaurant, right? It’s a bar?”

Ardyn shrugged. “I asked the proprietor if he minded. He said that he did not.” Beside that it was obvious people treated the place as if it were a restaurant anyway so Ravus had no point to complain. Really, though, Ardyn didn’t understand why the boy insisted he follow him around since they arrived in Atissa. One would think Ravus would much prefer to speak with his sister in private and pretend they didn’t have their wonderfully illicit and secret conversations against the Empire.

“The Emperor won’t like this delay,” Ravus said instead, words just the slightest bit spiteful, and Ardyn sighed.

Ah, youth. He could barely remember a time when he’d been that full of spirit and vitriol of the injustices of life; perhaps thirty years ago when he’d woken in this godsforsaken world with only Verstael and the pain of what he’d become for company. Now—now he was an impatient man and Ardyn could admit that readily, but he was also so very tired and while these moments of peace were a distraction and nothing more he found them to be enjoyable little tidbits for the time being. Soon, after all, things would begin to progress a bit more quickly and should he not enjoy these little moments when he had the time? Ardyn sipped at his can and glanced over at Weskham as the man stepped up close to them with a small pad and pen in hand.

“And what will our esteemed guests from Niflheim have today?” Weskham asked with only the smallest bit of disdain in his tone that warmed the bitter cockles of Ardyn’s black heart.

“I’ll have your wonderful Fettini di Cernia again, my dear Weskham,” Ardyn said lightly and with a faint flourish of his wrist. Across from him Ravus closed his eyes and seemed to need to gather himself for a moment before he spoke.

“I’ll take the Wood-Smoked Fish,” Ravus eventually said, with the slightest bit of tightness to his voice, and with a nod Weskham grabbed the menu’s and stepped away to make the meals.

Ardyn eyed Ravus for a minute longer and waited for the moment where the boy just _spit it out_ like he wanted to. While he didn’t want the peaceful moment to be wasted with Ravus’ breath, he did have appearances to keep up and he’d rather the boy be out with it sooner so that he could go back to enjoying the peace. A second later Ravus slouched down in the chair—so _uncouth_ —and sighed explosively.

“I don’t understand why she refuses to just call upon the blasted fish without that pathetic Prince,” Ravus growled out and Ardyn rolled his eyes heavenward.

 _Oh, Astrals give him strength_. There was plenty to take from the phrasing that made Ardyn want to wring the brat’s little neck, but he refrained and the Draconian should be mightily pleased with _that_. It wasn’t time to spread the darkness just yet, after all, oh no. He had to wait for darling _Noct_ to be in the Crystal first, and of course the brat was taking his sweet, sweet time in getting there. Honestly Ardyn wondered if he’d need to drag the boy to the Crystal by the collar at this rate just to get this entire mess over with.

“It’s the principle of the matter, you see,” Ardyn said eventually. He was feeling magnanimous today, so he didn’t bother to tell the boy off for his bit of blasphemous talk right now, which he was certain Ravus appreciated. While Ardyn had no love for the Astrals themselves these days he’d once been a very pious man who listened to their every word when they deigned to give it, so talk such as naming Leviathan as ‘the blasted fish’ was just so faux pas that it left him with a bit of a sour taste in his mouth.

“How so?” Ravus demanded. “She knows it would be better if she just called on it and let the Empire kill it. Then the Covenant—”

Ardyn tsk’ed loudly and cut Ravus off from continuing. “The Price would still need to be paid, boy,” Ardyn said softly. “She would still suffer from the Waking; and in this manner she’d suffer without end in sight.” At Ravus’ suddenly paled look Ardyn tilted his head and stared at him with half-hooded eyes. “Oh, was that not what you expected? I’m so sorry to disappoint, my dear boy, but the Gods are rarely if ever forgiving for being woken from their slumber. You may succeed in killing Leviathan, but that won’t stop your dear sister from suffering the Price—and why without the Prince to share the burden…she might not survive it.”

“You—” Ravus choked on the word and Ardyn sighed.

“Did I not tell you?” Ardyn murmured. “Oops.” He gave Ravus a smile, not-quite-nice and with a bit of Scourge edged in before he perked up at the smell of food. “Oh, Weskham you are a treat. Thank you.”

Weskham set down both plates of food with a raised eyebrow, a nod, and then moved back to behind his bar. Ardyn happily dug into his meal with a sigh of pleasure, although he noted how Ravus looked a little green at the edges and refused to eat. He eyed the boy, then nudged at the plate with one hand in a subtle reprimand. Ravus hesitantly took his fork in hand.

“Do chin up, child,” Ardyn murmured. “So, we are on the Prince’s time, and he is taking his sweet time, but that merely has gifted you more time with darling Lady Lunafreya.”

Ravus took a bite of his food, but it only seemed to sicken him to Ardyn’s confusion. Perhaps he didn’t find his meal to his taste? Pity that, the last time Ardyn had the Wood-Smoked Fish and it’d been utterly divine. His own meal was cooked to perfection and he found himself enjoying it immensely. He cut into another bite, and rather quickly finished off the meal to watch Ravus forcefully swallow down his own.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Ardyn murmured, “if the boy takes any longer, I will go and hunt him down myself. All he needed was a little _mythril_ after all.” Given the way in which Ravus choked the idea _didn’t_ make the young man feel any better. Ardyn sighed and signaled for another can of Ebony to drink as he looked out over the beauty of Altissa once more. A pity that soon it’d be nothing but a ruin, but such was the way of the world and the Will of the Astrals.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noctis has a plan. It is not a very good plan.

“ _That_ is where it is?” Prompto questioned as he and Noctis peered over the edge of the highway and down into the depths of Taelpar Crag. Noctis glanced back and eyed the way Cor stood firm and silent, and then Gladio because Noctis knew he couldn’t break Cor with a look but he could damn well break _Gladio_.

Gladio huffed. “Yes.”

“How did you get _down there?_ ” Noctis questioned with a faint sort of awe because—yeah, the canyon that was Taelpar Crag was huge and deep and there weren’t any ladders into it that Noctis knew of.

“I climbed,” Gladio said wryly and Noctis made a noise of disgust in the back of his throat at the thought of climbing into the depths of the Crag.

For a long, long moment Noctis considered the drop into the Crag and then considered Prompto who stared down into the depths like it mortally offended him. The group had spent five hours arguing around Noctis while he fished, and Prompto had deigned to not even bother with the arguments and instead sat beside him on the dock and even let Noctis lean into his shoulder when his back and leg started to act up from being in one position for too long. The fact that Prompto had been mostly silent and contemplative didn’t sit well with Noctis—because he knew what caused it, that Prompto had a _friend_ that might still be alive, someone who took his sharpshooter best friend and honed him into a deadly weapon. Noctis could see the signs.

Noctis also knew Prompto missed them; the people of the past he’d been with for ten years. The years that Prompto spent in silence in Insomnia, years bettering himself so that he felt good enough to say hi to the Prince of Lucis—which was _stupid_ and Noctis recognized that his own offhand and _stupid_ comment had been the fault—were negligible to the years he’d spent in the past separated from Noctis and from Noctis’ magic. Prompto came back _changed_ and while it hurt a little, to know that he didn’t hold that entire space in Prompto’s heart, Noctis felt a little assured that at least Prompto found another Lucis Caelum to tie himself to. A _good_ Lucis Caelum—currently Chancellor of Niflheim or not, Ardyn had been good for Prompto in the past, and Noctis refused to judge the man by the threats of _now_ until he’d gotten the _why_ out of him.

There was enough dirty deeds in the long line of Lucis Caelum that Noctis could see the threads, implied that they were. Someone in his family line, perhaps even the Founder King Himself, had wronged Ardyn irreparably. That they spent two-thousand years inevitably paying for it with their own lives meant nothing. Noctis could see it in the way the world weaved around Prompto, in the threads of magic, and in the touch of Ardyn from their few interactions. Something about the man had soured, and it made Noctis _itch_. He’d thought it’d been some sort of feedback of magic, but now he wondered if it were the blood of kin demanding reparations for sins of the ancestor or something equally, magically stupid.

“Think I can warp us down there?” Noctis asked after a while of silent contemplation.

“Better question is can you warp us back?” Prompto asked, and Noctis realized that was a good question.

Noctis also realized he couldn’t, so petulantly he muttered, “No.” Off to the side Cor smirked and Noctis narrowed his eyes with the urge to wipe that smirk off his face. He turned to regard the Immortal Marshal of Lucis, and then regard his Shield, and demanded with as much authority as he could, “How did you two get back up?”

Neither said anything which was telling enough so Noctis turned around and looked back down into the Crag. From behind him he could feel his Shield and his Hand tense; he could feel the way Cor seemed to realize that Noctis put something together and had begun to cook up a _scheme_. Before they had time to react Noctis and already grabbed Prompto who squeaked—and it felt _good_ that he could still get his friend to squeak, that some things were the same—and had already summoned his upgraded Engine Blade that he still hadn’t named.

“Hold tight,” Noctis said, and threw the blade downward and into the abyss. He focused, frowned, and _tugged_ after the tie of his weapon to his magic—his very soul, technically—and with the sound of the dimension ripping apart under his will and the fiery light of the sun Noctis dragged himself and Prompto to the blade.

 _“WHAT THE FUCK DUDE!?”_ Prompto yelled into his ear as they began to free fall and Noctis winced even as he pulled his arm back and threw the Engine Blade again.

They reappeared another thirty feet or so down and Noctis repeated the action. Each time Prompto’s screams got shriller and shriller but he focused on the task until _finally_ he landed on solid earth with Engine Blade in hand. Noctis let go of Prompto who dropped to the ground and cried—and Noctis couldn’t help but grin because all of the dramatics aside Prompto was _fine_ and Noctis damn well knew it. He’d done worse after all.

“I hate you,” Prompto muttered into the earth.

“You love me,” Noctis said back.

“Warping is _cheating_ ,” Prompto uttered, utterly disgusted, and pushed himself up until he was sitting. His face looked a bit green but Noctis knew it was worth it because he could get a little bit back for Prompto that the blond _needed_ and it’d go a little ways to repaying Prompto’s years of service in keeping Noctis sane—in dragging Noctis down from duty and being a Prince to being a _person_.

“It’s not cheating if it _works_ ,” Noctis countered and Prompto gave him such a _look_ that he found himself laughing even as Prompto groaned and flopped down onto his back.

“I fucking hate you so much right now,” Prompto told him as he gazed back upward, and Noctis followed the action with a breathless chuckle because _fuck it worked_ and he hadn’t fully thought it might. Noctis waved cheekily up at Gladio and Ignis and Cor who stared down and were probably yelling something, but he couldn’t really hear them well this far away. “I hate that you and the Princess have that same fucking excuse too.”

Noctis eyed Prompto. “Really?”

“Really, really.”

“Heh. Cool,” Noctis said, got to his feet, and dusted himself off. He offered a hand to Prompto and tugged the blond up—he wanted to tease and say _heavy_ like when they first met but refrained because it was _Prompto_ and he’d hurt the man once with that—and began to look around. “You got any idea where to go?”

Prompto sighed, scrubbed a hand down his face, and muttered a short, “ _No_.”

Noctis nodded. He hadn’t expected so, and really this had been a half-baked idea anyway, so he turned in a circle and surveyed the bottom of the canyon with interest. Then Noctis glanced back up and noted how dusk seemed to be coming on faster than he’d thought so he sighed heavily and muttered, “Well we better hunt down some shelter. Sun’s going down.”

“Have I mentioned that I _hate you?”_

“I think you mean you love me.”

“ _Asshole._ ”

“I love you too, Prom.”

“…I love you too, Noct, as a _brother_.”

Noctis grinned. Score one for the King of Lucis.

* * *

 

Night fell and they’d wedged themselves into a pocket in the canyon wall, a little dusty and dirty from their travels but blissfully unharmed. As far as they could see none of the creatures of the land seemed to have made a living down here, although Prompto did note some signs of sabertusks and a potential den otherwise abandoned. In the darkness, lit only by the flashlights—one on Noctis’ specifically designed jacket, the other recently pinned to Prompto’s older outer coat that worked to cover up his half-tunic and vest—Prompto helped Noctis set up a small camp for the two of them.

“Do you know how to lay down the runic enchantments?” Prompto asked, voice soft in the dark. It didn’t tremble like it used to when he was young, terrified of the daemons that came from the dark and suffering from claustrophobia. Ten years in the past had long gotten hum used to daemons, even if they unsettled him and induced a primal sort of fear that he’d worked ruthlessly to squash.

“Runic…enchantments?” Noctis asked, and the curious tilt to his head told Prompto everything.

“Don’t worry,” Prompto mumbled, “I’ll show you how. You’ll have to add the magic.” He’d thought, when he met Ardyn and saw how the man protected his and Gil’s camp, that perhaps Noctis just hadn’t felt comfortable doing so. It would’ve greatly saved them time when a Hunt took long and they had to run back to a Haven in the dark to avoid the Iron Giants that liked to form and roam the land.

There weren’t any Haven’s when he traveled with Ardyn; Prompto wondered at who made them, when, and _why_. It didn’t matter though even as he single mindedly began to carve with one of his daggers into the stone the sigils needed to protect their small space from daemons and allow them a night’s rest without fear. Noctis seemed utterly fascinated, and they were lucky nothing formed yet to attack them but it was only time until _something_ did.

“How do I add magic to them?” Noctis asked. “I’m an elementalist, Prom.”

“Not true,” Prompto said and grunted when one of the runes became particularly hard to carve. “You wouldn’t be able to make our curatives if you were _just_ an elementalist.” In the dark Noctis flushed, and Prompto knew it was because for some reason the Kings of Lucis and the line of Lucis Caelum—at least today—tended not to advertise the fact that they could do what accounted to _white magic_.

“I don’t like to advertise it,” Noctis mumbled even as Prompto finished the last rune. “I’d rather leave all that stuff to Luna.”

Prompto shook his head. “It’s fine, Noct, but right now we gotta get this up and running. Drop a barrier into the sigils here—” Prompto pointed to one set, and so Noctis knelt and focused on the barrier magic that he knew somewhat vaguely to do. “Good. Now a holy spell here,” Prompto touched another set.

“I…don’t have a holy spell,” Noctis mumbled, slightly embarrassed, and Prompto rolled his eyes.

“Then a curative,” Prompto said dryly. Noctis _had_ to have a small holy spell stashed away in the brain of his, but Prompto couldn’t tell if he just didn’t want to admit it or if it was years of ingrained secrecy that kept him silent. After a moment Noctis bit his lip and dropped a burst of light into the set to which Prompto just shook his head. “Lair.”

“Shut up and tell nobody,” Noctis said sharply, and Prompto nodded in reply.

“I won’t,” Prompto said, voice firm. “Now a heal spell here,” Prompto touched the inner set, and promptly Noctis dropped the spell into it. All three rows lit up with a faint white light, like that of a Haven but less permanent. The magic would fade by dawn and then they’d return to just being carved lines in the rock.

Prompto could see the moment when the newly formed magic, created out of combined spells and reinforced by the runes, washed over them and realization hit Noctis. His mouth dropped open in surprise as he mumbled, “It’s a _Haven_.” Outside they could hear an Iron Giant form with he groan of metal old and rusted as it twisted into being.

“Duh. How else do you think we got around, Noct?” Prompto teased. “There weren’t any Haven’s when I traveled with Ardyn and Gil, and most villages didn’t want to accept us even if Ardyn healed the sick.”

Noctis relaxed against the cave wall and looked at Prompto in the dim light as the blond began to work on building up a fire out to cook some dinner on. It wouldn’t be anything like Ignis’ meals, but it’d work to get the job done.

“He really healed people?” Noctis asked after a moment of silence, more comfortable in the dark now that they had their temporary Haven set up.

Prompto laughed, “Yeah. He did.” The fire lit up and warmth washed around them and in the cave.

Noctis leaned forward on his knees. “Tell me how you met?”

Prompto smiled, a wide one that crinkled up and around his eyes. They spent a few hours talking into the night about Ardyn, about Gilgamesh, and a few adventures Prompto had in the past.

* * *

 

“Why didn’t you try and _stop them?!_ ” Ignis shouted at Gladio and Cor. The former looked away, hunched down and arms crossed while Cor stood firm and tall. “Why did you even damn well _tell them_ about the Tempering Grounds?! You could’ve kept your silence and avoided the trouble!”

Gladio sighed heavily, drew Ignis’ ire in his direction as he did so. He focused on the reason, the source of it—that Noctis and Prompto were alone, in the dark, down within Taelpar Crag.

“You know that Prompto would have persisted,” Gladio said softly, “and Noctis _ordered_ it, Iggy.”

“Don’t you Iggy me, Gladiolus!”

Gladio huffed and growled faintly and looked away with a grimace. “Do you think I honestly _wanted_ this, Iggy? That I wanted to direct them to that hell on earth? I mean yeah the spirits old, and maybe he’s Prompto’s friend or something, but _fuck_ Ignis I hoped to scare them away not— _this_.”

“Well you damn well should have realized Noctis would get a half-baked scheme in mind! And two-thousand-year-old spirit or not doesn’t mean this is Prompto’s friend, let alone remembers him!” Ignis said, voice raised even higher. His eyes looked frantic behind his glasses. “It’s been two thousand years, Gladio! _Two thousand years!_ Anything could have happened in that time. They could die—”

Cor spoke up, voice firm, “We won’t let them die.”

“How can you assure me of that when they are alone, in the dark—”

“They’ll be fine,” Cor said, and Ignis ground his teeth together and Gladio wanted to _scream_ because that wouldn’t help, and they wouldn’t be. Not without a light to keep the daemons at bay, not without a Haven to keep them safe. “They both have extensive combat training, and Prompto has been fighting daemons for ten years now.”

“They are just a party of _two_ ,” Ignis ground out. “We are a separated party now and the last time we separated it did not go in our favor, Marshal.”

Cor shook his head and sighed heavily. “We can’t do anything tonight unless you want to face off with an Iron Giant or three, Scientia?” Ignis looked away with ground teeth. “In the morning we will descend into the Crag. We will find them. We will pull them back kicking and screaming if we must, but they will be _safe_.”

“And if they make it to the Tempering Grounds before we can stop them?” Ignis demanded.

Gladio reached out and grasped Ignis by the shoulder, only to be met with a firm glare and pressed thin lips. “It’s a hard place to find, Iggy,” Gladio said, “and there’s a lot of Crag.”

“If they make it to the Tempering Grounds?” Ignis demanded again, voice low with the faintest hint of a growl.

“Then we cut through the spirits and drag them out kicking and screaming,” Cor said bluntly. “I will not allow them to come to harm from the Tempering Grounds.”

Ignis looked to Cor, bared his teeth, and said sharply, “Good. If they do come to harm, I will kill you.”

Cor stared back, face utterly blank as he replied, “I might just let you.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regis is laughing in the Ring. He has to be. Cor is certain of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gilgamesh's name is now Gilgamesh Murus Tenebrae and he essentially looks like a fucking Drow and you can pry this from my cold, dead hands. Also Prompto is basically just low-key gay for all of his friends at this point.

Prompto woke Noctis at dawn, much to his King’s consternation—but then it’d been Noctis’ demand to be roused with the sun and Prompto found himself only following through. Sure he could easily have ignored the words. It wasn’t like Noctis gave him a _royal decree_ —he hadn’t even used _the voice_ that caused Iggy to stiffen his spine in reaction, or really did things to people in _general_ because it was Noctis and _the voice_.

Ardyn’s version of _the voice_ was pure rapturous torture and Prompto really didn’t want to think about _that_ because it reminded him how terribly gay he was for his two _best friends_ and they weren’t even available. Noctis had a pretty blonde bride-to-be in Atissia, a Princess in her own right, that he’d met all of a week and never again after. Ardyn had his beautiful Astral-blessed Oracle back in Civitas Lucii that awaited him with a smile and a kiss and the auburn haired man was utterly _besotted_ and no, Prompto refused to get between that.

End all be all Noctis hadn’t used _the voice_ and so Prompto found himself in the unique position of not required to wake Noctis at dawn, yet at the same time required to wake Noctis at dawn. He took to the position with gleeful aplomb, found a pool of water in the canyon, and proceeded to dump it on Noctis’ face. The spluttered look of betrayal, sleep-sodden that it was, was beautifully perfect and Prompto found himself with a wide grin and a giddy bubbling feeling in his chest that only Noctis could make him feel.

“Mornin’!” Prompto cheered, and Noctis groaned and flopped himself over with a heavy sigh and a faint whine.

“It’s too early,” Noctis complained, the words dragged out of him with a torturous groan.

“You said Dawn, Your Majesty,” Prompto teased, and Noctis grabbed his pillow and threw it in Prompto’s direction in response. Prompto laughed and pranced out of the tent, assured that Noctis would follow in short order.

Surely enough, five minutes later Noctis emerged from the tent, dressed, and with a stifled yawn from behind one hand. Prompto moved to quickly disassemble their tent and camping supplies. He nudged Noctis over toward the small can of cold beans to which the King of Lucis pulled a disgusted face at. He looked to Prompto who arched an eyebrow and _waited_. Noctis’ hate of vegetables of all kinds was well known, and that included beans into the mix. After a moment stare down Noctis took the spoon out of the can and with a scowl stuffed the beans into his mouth. He pulled a face, but Prompto expected that.

The camping supplies were neatly stacked back away into Noctis’ armiger by the time Noctis finished his can of beans. He washed down the taste with a bottle of water from the armiger and a betrayed look at Prompto. Prompto shrugged his shoulders.

“Best I could do,” Prompto said.

“ _Beans_ ,” Noctis ground out, and left it at that because Prompto knew and Noctis knew that Prompto knew and that was all that mattered. He ate them, so Prompto counted it as a win.

 _One to one, Noct_ , the blond thought viciously, and let his grin show when Noctis huffed, annoyed.

After a moment where they stood in their little cavern with the dying light of the magic that Noctis infused, Noctis scrubbed his hand through his still soaked hair with a sigh. They both eyed the exit of the cave contemplatively before Noctis mumbled, “Which direction should we go?”

“Continue the way we were?” Prompto suggested, just the barest hint of concern in his voice that it might be wrong. How would he _know_ where to go? The Blademaster could be anywhere and Taelpar Crag covered from Lestallum to Cape Caem like a giant gash straight through the continent that Lucis existed upon.

“How do you expect to find your friend?” Noctis questioned as they started out. “Do you have some way to—sense him or something?”

Prompto huffed. “I _planned_ to have Cor and Gladio show us the way, then yell really loud once we got there. Maybe call him out for being a coward or something—because seriously who the fuck abandons their godsdamn friend like that?”

Noctis eyed Prompto, and Prompto felt relieved that he didn’t bring up the fact that Cor and Gladio very obviously were not going to bring them to the Tempering Grounds. Prompto was thankful Noctis decided to fuck that decision and drag him down, he just wished it were in another way. Still, Noctis looked off to the side and asked, tone light, “How do you know he abandoned your friend?”

Prompto kicked at a rock. “He’s still here, isn’t he?”

Noctis frowned, and then pointed out logically, “That doesn’t mean he abandoned your friend.” Prompto looked at him with a frown. “You traveled through time, Prom. Ardyn could’ve done the same and—”

Prompto shook his head and muttered a short, “I think I would’ve known if Gil was _immortal_ , Noct. He might’ve been a necromancer but he wasn’t, like, some sort of lich or something.” Noctis fell silent at the phrasing because _what_. Prompto continued, “There’s no way he could still be around if Ardyn— _no_ ,” and Noctis decided to just ignore the former half of Prompto’s rambling as Prompto-brand logic wherein games could be applied to reality in some strange, half-mad way.

The only other thing that left as for why Gilgamesh remained in the world and why Ardyn walked the earth was Divine Punishment, but neither wanted to think about that. Prompto, because that meant something _happened_ when Gilgamesh abandoned Ardyn, and Gilgamesh would _never_ abandon Ardyn as far as Prompto knew. Unless Ardyn commanded it—but Ardyn _wouldn’t_. He _couldn’t_ —except, Prompto knew, Ardyn would, could, and potentially _did_ and he hated that even moreso.

For Noctis the implication was just as bad in another way, and the young King _hated_ it. He hated how his father kept secrets from him, how people _still_ keep things from him. He hated that Regis died in Insomnia and sent him away—and he hated that somewhere, someone in his line had wronged a member of their family. A member that was stuck living an immortal life for who knows what reason because Noctis surely didn’t! Someone, somewhere, would’ve written it down but it was as if Lucis as a collective whole just _forgot_ and that was _wrong_. For a moment Noctis stopped walking and clenched his hands into a fist.

No wonder Ardyn lived as the Chancellor of Niflheim. Noctis might’ve done the same in his shoes.

“Uh, Noct?” Prompto spoke up when he registered the look on Noctis’ face—the one where Noctis seemed to be intently contemplating murder—"You okay?”

Noctis shook himself and said, “It’s nothing.” They walked on in silence for another five feet before Noctis said, “Why don’t you?”

Prompto tilted his head. “Why don’t I what?”

Noctis looked at Prompto, brow furrowed and gaze half-distant. “Why don’t you call him out? Yell his name and call him a coward?”

Prompto paused. He wanted to say because he felt fairly certain Gilgamesh couldn’t—wouldn’t—hear him, but he had no reason to really think so. They were in a _canyon_ and sound _carried_ after all and—a small grin crossed Prompto’s face. Noctis blinked.

“Permission to scream at one of my good friends?” Prompto asked, lips quirked up just a titch toward the side of cheeky.

Noctis huffed out a faint laugh, then waved his hand and said faux grandly, “Permission granted.”

Prompto opened his mouth and _screamed._ Noctis regretted his approval almost instantly as his hands slapped over his ears and he gave Prompto a betrayed look, even as the blond continued to yell as loudly as he could.

“ _GIL YOU MOTHERFUCKING COWARDLY PIECE OF SHIT GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE SO I CAN KICK IT!_ ”

* * *

 

Gilgamesh felt a stiff breeze within the cavern system and raised his head from the stew he diligently tended toward. With a murmured softness, his own voice amidst the thousands of dead that flocked to him like parasites, Gilgamesh murmured, “An ill omen.” Calmly Gilgamesh pulled the ladle from the stew and with a clenched fist he smothered the flames. A secondary wave of his hand had the stew frozen over in chill hoarfrost of the dead.

The Home of Gilgamesh nestled deep into the cavern system, well passed the bridge he tested those foolish enough to throw their life away at his hands. It made itself of rotted logs and scavenged clothes from the dead and their weaponry, but it worked for Gilgamesh’s purposes, and it worked well. It kept out the worst of the chill, at the very least, and that was all he could ask for in his self-imposed exile.

As Gilgamesh stepped past the threshold of his home his armor began to form around the simple cloth he used as clothing when not in the middle of combat. It came to him on spectral wind and with the faintest charm of shattering glass. Before him knelt ten ghosts of dead long past as he moved, and Gilgamesh paid them no heed. The dead were useless without true form, and these were unthinking pests at best. No, Gilgamesh sought out one with more thought in its head—more recent, more tangible in its shape and belief. He sought out one of the remnants that hadn’t yet fully bound themselves into his service—and he found one, tall, that awaited him near the bridge.

“What news is born on the ill wind?” Gilgamesh questioned. “Another Challenger to Witness, another Soul to claim at the Gates?”

The Spirit shook its head and ducked it low. Gilgamesh ignored the way it trembled—it had years left before it subsumed with the rest, so it remembered its own death and its own failings and that was on the Spirit and not on Gilgamesh. It said, “No, milord.”

“Then what has drawn me to this place, if no Challenger comes—no Soul awaits?” Gilgamesh pulled his mask into hand—wisps of the dead swirled into his palm until it formed heavy to hold.

“A scream on the wind,” the Spirit spoke. “It calls for you.”

“There is no scream to beholden me,” Gilgamesh said, tone short and the Spirit ducked low.

“It calls for you,” the Spirit spoke. “It bids you Coward and names you Gil, the Motherfucker.”

Gilgamesh froze, stiff and as unmoving as the Glacian, and then he murmured, “Oh, he didn’t,” with the falling tones of one long sort of suffering. Gilgamesh took a step and vanished into the sudden mists. He took two more into the fog of the dead, and when he stepped a third time it was to leave the mists and to stand at the front of the Tempering Grounds. Gilgamesh stared, and listened, and waited.

_“I SWEAR TO FUCK IF I DON’T SEE YOU IN THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES I AM GOING TO DROP A FIRAJA ON YOUR ASS SO HARD.”_

Gilgamesh settled with a faint shudder at the thought of flames and heat, then slid his mask home. He knew that voice, knew the barely controlled grief within it and the rage that buried itself beneath the waves of childishness and scholastic glee. It was a voice he long, long believed to be lost to the ravages of time and even to his own memory. Had not the Scourge devoured the bright one whole? Or had yet another lie been told to him, in a long list of lies and mockeries of his devotion?

A second and Gilgamesh decided it mattered not. Even if the boy had lived, even if the Scourge had not devoured his brightness, he surely could not exist two thousand years hence that day. The Accursed had his facsimile of life as a Gift from the Draconian—a Curse, in truth—and Gilgamesh’s own choices wrought him here in this world, two thousand years on and well past when he should’ve crossed through the Gates to the Beyond. He breathed in the air, crisp and lacking in the staleness of the cave, and with determination to see this phantom memory to its completion Gilgamesh stepped out into the bright of the sun for the first time in two thousand years.

Once the job was done, this distraction completed, Gilgamesh would return to his cavern home to await his inevitable end with the end of the Night Eternal.

* * *

 

The scene that Cor expected to come upon was not the scene he found himself at. Firstly, they weren’t near the Tempering Grounds in the least, which for a brief moment Cor found himself thankful for. He would never have survived if Regis even suspected he let his boy get into that hell-pit. The man would’ve come back as one of the Lucii and impaled Cor in the worst way imaginable, he had no doubt.

Secondly, the Blademaster was out of his cave. The minute Cor gazed upon the familiar armor, stood across Noctis and Prompto with blade in his singular hand, Cor felt his chest constrict. A half-a-second he thought he might’ve had a heart attack, before he realized he just wasn’t breathing. Cor forced himself to take in a breath and consider the situation before him—yet he didn’t even have that half-second to do so because once Gladio and Ignis registered the situation it went from tense and unusual to completely fucked.

“ _Noctis!_ ” Ignis screamed, alongside Gladiolus who charged right back at the Blademaster with a yell of, “ _Get away from them you undead bastard!_ ” and Cor—Cor could do nothing to stop them as they raced into a fight that hadn’t even begun. In the time he’d taken a step—a time where the Blademaster yanked up his sword, followed by six _others_ , all spectral and refracted in the light of the sun, to block Gladiolus’ downswing of the Genji Blade. In that instant Ignis ducked up and under the Blademaster’s guard with his Spelldaggers and slicked into the armor— _through it_ —and into the belly of the swordsman who grunted, surprised.

Cor felt faint. Ignis ducked backward, twisted into a roll, and dodged one blade that flew after him with a faint shimmer of a hand near invisible wrapped around its hilt. Gladiolus shoved the five remaining blades away with the Genji Blade and switched swords to a much heavier broadsword that he slammed down into the ground with a thunderous crash that shook the very earth. As Ignis sweeped back around with his hands wrapped in spellfire Cor’s view of the mess became inexplicably ruined by the telltale ripping of the world through a warp and Noctis’ rather bright smile in his face.

“Hey, Cor,” the young King uttered, completely unfazed by the mess that raged behind him. Cor thought he saw Prompto pull out some giant Nif-made _thing_ but Noctis just moved to block his view and—Cor sighed and found himself reminded of Regis and how Regis would often play distraction to Weskham as he, Clarus, and Cid got themselves into trouble.

“Noctis,” Cor rumbled, tone just on this side of disappointed.

“It’s cool. They got this,” Noctis said instead of anything, and for a moment Cor frowned. Certainly, Gladiolus had bested the Blademaster—the beast _gave him the Genji Blade back_ —but Ignis was foremost an elementalist and not a warrior like Gladiolus and Prompto—Prompto was an unknown, now, Cor admitted silently. “Seriously, Cor, Prom’s got this.”

“Your Majesty,” Cor started when the ground rocked with sudden force and all of Cor’s clothes tugged forward. He could feel his feet dragging in the dust and dirt, even Noctis’ drifted backward as the young King grinned at him with a joy that Cor hadn’t seen in his eyes in a long, long while. Everything had been muted with the young King for so long that Cor thought perhaps the strongest emotion he’d felt had been that anger back in the Tomb, but the pure joy and mischief eclipsed the sudden outburst from before and Cor found himself—still.

Noctis shifted to the side to show Cor what happened, and Cor stared almost breathless at the sight of Prompto between two giant _black holes_ worth of magical energy. One tugged Gladiolus and Ignis backward off of their feet and the other kept the Blademaster in place as the blond glared at him, giant behemoth of a Nif-make weapon in hand.

“See?” Noctis said from beside Cor, who wondered why he even thought these kids weren’t capable of _shit_. Apparently, they were more than capable of shit and— _fuck_ why did he even leave them _alone?_ Obviously, Cor realized, he’d not been thinking after he left them in Leide. The amount of craziness they got up to was worse then Regis and himself combined and that frightened Cor just the slightest bit.

“Your Highness?” Cor said, voice just barely strangled in surprise.

“I told you,” Noctis said with bright eyes and a wide grin. “Prom’s got this.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto feels a little bit like he's home, now, and it hurts all the worse. Gilgamesh's shitty fucking humor and flirting and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No matter what I did this chapter refused to end, so I just...ended it. Unsatisfactorily.

The two gravity wells petered out as their magic fully dissipated. It left the battlefield quiet aside from the heavy breaths of Ignis and Gladio—but Prompt had eyes only for the armored form of Gilgamesh that straightened up a full seven feet tall and whose chest heaved in the way mortal men’s did. Prompto tracked his gaze to the missing arm, and then to the six spectral arms that held aloft Gilgamesh’s six secondary blades. Prompto sighed and dropped the machine into the dust and dirt. His eyes narrowed and his right hand lightly traced the knives that lined his belt as he waited.

Gilgamesh took a step forward and swiped the blade in hand downward. Prompto watched how the man rolled his neck to unstiffen his spine, and the way the behemoth of a man loosened his gait just the slightest bit. “Who bade me come hence?” Gilgamesh uttered, and his voice struck through the air like a firecracker.

Prompto grinned and danced lightly back on the balls of his feet. He raised his left arm up and waved. “Hey, Gil!” He watched how Gilgamesh cocked his head, and Prompto’s grin held just a bit more teeth than to be polite. “How ya’ve been, _cowering away in a cave_?”

Gilgamesh tilted his head forward. He said, lowly, “You.”

Prompto leaned back and tugged a knife up into his hand and twirled it between his fingers. “ _Me_ ,” he drawled back, entirely too pleased with himself.

Gilgamesh moved forward with a speed that Prompto could remember from their time sparing at the self-made Haven’s of Ardyn’s. He crossed the thirty feet in mere seconds, a speed that Noctis or the Glaives could only achieve through a warp and Gilgamesh did it with a simple, forceful push of his booted feet into the dirt. Prompto laughed and danced out of the way just as quick so that when Gilgamesh swung his blade where Prompto stood the blond easily stood behind him and lightly spun on his feet.

“Missed me!” Prompto teased, and then ducked out of three more swipes of the blade as Gilgamesh spun around. He forced himself to jump, used the small well of magic that he’d been taught to enhance the movement with a well placed thrust of _gravity_ so that Prompto’s jump turned into what could’ve been a Dragoon’s leap—except Prompt twisted the leap into a flip and flung three of his knives to be deflected by three of Gilgamesh’s auxiliary blades.

Prompto landed on the balls of his feet once more behind Gilgamesh. He bounced for a moment with another laugh, and faintly he could hear Gladio whistle in shock behind him. Then, with the wide grin on his face Prompto darted forward. He threw three more of the knives from his belt, each deflected, and then slid on his knees underneath the other three that swiped at him and waved cheekily at Gilgamesh as his momentum dragged him past the impossibly tall man. Prompto kicked out a small _aero_ with one hand into the dirt to curve his trajectory and then pulled out the crossbow from Ardyn’s armiger and raised it up, bolt aimed right at Gilgamesh’s face.

Gilgamesh stopped his sword at Prompto’s neck and both stared at one another for a moment before Prompto dismissed the crossbow and collapsed backward into peals of laughter to Gilgamesh’s sudden, drawn out sigh. Like that the short minutes worth of a fight left the two of them. Gilgamesh dismissed the spirits that held onto the extra swords and they broke apart into wisps that vanished into the sun’s rays. Gilgamesh tilted his head back and _laughed_ , a deep booming sort of sound that brought Prompto’s cackles into a higher sort of fever-pitch in response.

A second later Prompto found himself choking, not from laughter, but from the tears that wanted to gather at his eyes. Everything hit home all at once with the sort of emotional hammer that the blond hadn’t wanted to think about. Gilgamesh, Ardyn, time travel— _everything_. One hand came up to cover across his eyes as the laughter continued tied up in the choking that wanted to swallow him as the tears gathered and then fell. Prompto pressed the hand into his eyes and kept his grin up because what else could he do?

Years ago Prompto had consigned himself to never getting home. With that realization he’d begun to build a life with Ardyn and Gilgamesh. He trained, and eventually he took the Oaths. Ardyn may not have been his King—Noctis would always hold that title in Prompto’s heart—but he’d been someone Prompto could follow, could _bind himself_ to. Back then Prompto had missed it—missed the feel of Lucis Caelum magic nestled next to his core. He missed the feel of being wanted that Noctis made him—he missed the smiles and the lazy days of playing Kings Night.

It felt horribly bittersweet to have it all back now, only for Prompto to have lost the life he’d finally gotten himself used to. Life with Ardyn and keeping the princess’ ass out of trouble, of traveling from village to village and healing what little he could—of Ardyn crying over a dead baby Garula because they needed the food, of Gilgamesh herding their drunken asses to a campsite that Ardyn drunkenly blessed with magic and runes to protect from the night. Half of Prompto still thought this had been a dream; he survived under that mindset until he felt Ardyn’s magic at his heart, and even then he pushed the realization aside.

Except now here stood Gilgamesh, one-armed and slower, but just as dangerous from before. Here he stumbled into the same song and dance they performed for Ardyn, as entertainment, as a way to relax after a long days travel. Here was a tangible form of the life Prompto had made—a life that was _gone_ and yet _not_ and Prompto didn’t know what to feel about it all. He just knew that it hurt—that something _hurt_ and he couldn’t explain it.

Prompto didn’t notice when Gilgamesh stopped laughing until Gilgamesh was suddenly at his side, on his knees, hand wrapped around his right wrist and over the glove that covered up the barcode. That arm tugged the hand away from Prompto’s face and Prompto blinked the tears out of his eyes to look at Gilgamesh’s face. Those dark eyes seemed almost impossibly wide, set in a face the color of dusk that seemed far paler than Prompto remembered.

“You live,” Gilgamesh said, voice a soft rumble. The golden-brown gaze searched Prompto’s face for a moment, almost as if he couldn’t believe it.

Prompto chuckled and quirked a wet sort of smile as he said, “What? Thought I died? Pssh, please, Gil. You know me better.”

For a moment Gilgamesh’s face was blank, and then he couldn’t look at Prompto in the eyes anymore and stared down at the blond’s cheek. Prompto couldn’t believe it, but Gilgamesh’s eyes actually watered a little as he pulled the blond’s wrist up against his chest and leaned down until his brow touched the dirt alongside Prompto’s face.

“I thought I failed in this,” Gilgamesh said, voice barely a whisper. “That I left you to fall into the cold embrace of the Gate alone.”

“I didn’t die, Gil,” Prompto said, voice tight. “I didn’t.”

“Ardyn did not…?” Gilgamesh said, and his voice trailed off almost afraid to voice the thought.

“Ardyn did nothing to me,” Prompto said, vehemently enough that it suffused his limbs with strength and he pushed himself up and pushed Gilgamesh back. “You seriously thought he— _what the fuck_ , Gil?!”

Gilgamesh kept his hand tight around Prompto’s wrist, fingers dug into Prompto’s pulse point which Prompto registered the man used to keep himself grounded even as he refused to look at Prompto’s face. Prompto felt himself a little sick at the thought that his comments about Gilgamesh being a coward actually held merit. He hadn’t believed that Gilgamesh willingly _abandoned_ Ardyn despite what he joked. He just couldn’t fathom it.

“You _knew_ him!” Prompto said, and he knew he was screaming at the way Gilgamesh flinched. “He was your fucking _best friend!_ You knew him better than _anyone_ and you thought he—”

“He was changed,” Gilgamesh said. “He returned and you were gone. I called to the Gate but you did not answer.”

“I _wasn’t dead!_ ”

“Yet you never strayed from his side,” Gilgamesh said, and his grip tightened. “Not once.” Prompto swallowed heavily. “I strayed, too often, and yet you remained. What was I to think, then? Two months with no word, and he returned to me changed and the brightness in our lives gone? What was I to think, Silver?”

“You should’ve asked him,” Prompto ground out.

“Events were too far along,” Gilgamesh countered. “Little I could do to sway them from their Path. He from His, or They from Theirs. The time had come, the Draconian Spoke, and They Obeyed like sheep to the slaughter.”

Prompto swallowed and said, “Even Aera?”

“Even She,” Gilgamesh uttered, then sighed. “Especially She.”

Prompto hissed between his teeth and said a plaintive, “ _Fuck_.”

Gilgamesh smiled bitterly. “Indeed.”

* * *

 

By the time Prompto had climbed to his feet and returned to Noctis with Gilgamesh at his side, both Gladio and Cor looked pale and on the verge of fainting in the heavy heat of the day. Prompto couldn’t be certain if it weren’t because of heat sickness or something, but the way Noctis grinned he doubted it was something so simple. At any rate Prompto stretched and rolled his eyes when Gilgamesh’s remaining hand followed his wrist, still clamped tight to it.

“Hey, guys,” Prompto said, and if his voice was a little hoarser than at least no one said anything. “Lemme introduce you to this jerkface.”

Gilgamesh snorted, and then coughed when Prompto slammed his right hand into the large man’s chest in response. After a second Gilgamesh sighed and dipped his head in the direction of Noctis as Prompto continued cheerfully.

“This is Gilgamesh Murus, the Lord Tenebrae.” Prompto glanced over at Ignis who seemed to choke at the semi-formal introduction even as Gilgamesh half-mumbled his greetings and then raised his head back up.

Cor—all six feet of the man—tried his damnedest to hide behind the five-foot six-inches Noctis Lucis Caelum when Gilgamesh’s gaze drifted in his direction. Prompto ignored the mess aside from a half-held in snort even as he cheerfully introduced Noctis to Gilgamesh with the phrase, “And Gil this is Noct, the guy I helped keep alive before I met the Princess.”

“You mean got into trouble,” Noctis said, although his smile looked a little bit forced and Prompto frowned just the faintest bit because—why was Noctis looking at him like that? He wanted to ask, but found the words stuck in his throat.

From beside Prompto Gilgamesh shifted, and then stepped forward with his focus past the young King. He spoke now, voice just on the faintest edge of amused, “I had not thought to see you again.”

Prompto glanced between Gilgamesh and the slowly reddening Cor Leonis, only faintly confused because he remembered how Gladio had thrown Cor under the bus in the early hours of the morning—yesterday, had it been only _yesterday_?—and Cor had admitted to facing off against Gilgamesh at the tender age of fifteen but—obviously the younger man had left quite the impression if the way Gilgamesh’s lips curled just faintly as he eyed the man from beneath his hood.

“You’re a man,” Cor said, voice verging on the edge of faint, and when Gilgamesh laughed, he shook his head and said, “I mean I— _fuck_.”

“Yes, I am a man, same as you,” Gilgamesh murmured, “although the touch of time may yet call me to her embrace, I still eat and breathe as a man born of flesh. You, I see, wear time’s changes well.” Gilgamesh tilted his head lightly. “You were such a curious thing, Cor Leonis. I am glad you have taken to life and not to the Gates that Called you.”

Prompto opened his mouth, and then closed it a second with wide eyes. He couldn’t _believe_ what he was seeing. After a second, slowly because surely he had to be imagining things, Prompto asked, “Gil? Are you…flirting with Cor?”

Gladio choked as Gilgamesh looked at Prompto with raised brow and an amused smile on his lips. “He bested me,” Gilgamesh uttered with a shrug toward his missing arm. “An awakening I sorely needed.”

Cor buried his face into his hands with a strangled sort of sound and Prompto, Prompto looked a bit stricken because that was a _yes_ and not something he thought he’d see again. The type of people Gilgamesh tended to flirt with were few and far between, and Prompto hadn’t thought one of them would be _Cor the Immortal_ but here he was, seeing the hero of his childhood being flirted with a close and personal friend. Prompto scrunched his nose up and then said, “Fuck, man, could you do that when you _aren’t_ holding on to my wrist with a death grip?”

“I make no oath,” Gilgamesh uttered and Prompto groaned and leaned into the taller man’s side and mumbled something completely intelligible.

A second later Prompto pulled away from Gil, face pinched, and he uttered, “Have you even fucking _bathed_ in two thousand years?!”

Gilgamesh stared down at him, then uttered a blunt, “No.” He kept a straight face for a second longer before his lips curled up into a wide grin at Prompto’s horrified and almost betrayed face.

* * *

 

The Chosen Last King of Lucis, His Chosen Shield, His Hand, the bright Silver, and the ever curiosity Cor Leonis rented a caravan for the night once the party finally finished the climb out of Taelpar Crag. The novelty of the sun wore off as the heat bore down upon his armored flesh and reminded Gilgamesh bitterly of a time when he traveled across the seas in search of Civitas Lucii. The heat and the salt of the water had bored upon him then as the heat of the sun and the dust bore upon him now. Yet Silver bade him to not remove the armor and sit within his modest tunic and pants as they traveled through the carriage of the times from the Crag into the barest sense of civilization.

Gilgamesh found himself fascinated. He’d seen technological marvels in his time, being in the service of Ardyn had shown him much of the word, but a carriage of the likes with which Silver traveled in now was beyond anything he could have imagined. He kept his hands to himself, even as he settled into the back seat with Silver placed on his lap, hand still wrapped around the blond’s wrist with his fingers still dug into that pulse point. The feel of the heartbeat and the scent of the Soul within its confines of Flesh were far more of a comfort to Gilgamesh then the familiar face and voice. They were comforts that two thousand years prior he found himself denied, and so to have time here and now to reassure himself that he dreamed _not_ was much appreciated.

A conversation still owed between them, Gilgamesh and Silver. A conversation that would speak of what was and what is, of consequences and failures, but Gilgamesh thanked the Six that they felt merciful enough to grant him back a small bit of the light he thought long devoured into the Scourge. With reluctance Gilgamesh eventually parted from Silver, but when the blond bade him to _bathe_ with yet another grimaced face Gilgamesh went without word. The waters that flowed over him were a luxury he lacked these two thousand years since he walked out of the Confirmation, and then out of Civitas Lucii with the knowledge that meant he left his duty and forsook his Oaths. He found himself comforted by the feel of it, the tapered warmth that turned towards burning eased at muscles he long forced himself to forget.

Gilgamesh leaned back under the spray and let himself settle with the feel of life around him, of Souls bright and not yet bound of the Gate, of water and warmth. For the first time in two thousand years he let himself relax and feel more than the dead that flocked to him, more than the memory and bitterness that often wanted to swallow him. Gilgamesh touched his hand to his breast and toyed with the idea to even reach out to Ardyn, to feel the warmth of the magic that never left him—yet he didn’t. He clenched his hand into a fist and ducked his head under the spray of water and closed that part of himself off once more.

A conversation owed between Gilgamesh and Silver—one that sorely needed to happen—stood in Gilgamesh’s way of that comfort. A conversation owed, and a guilt that spanned too many lifetimes that he denied. Two thousand years Gilgamesh spent at Guard, at the Gate, after that fateful day with nary a thought back to his decision then. He could wait hours yet before he dared reflect upon the mistakes of his past, the lies and deceits he allowed himself to believe wholeheartedly in. After all, Silver lived—what else could that mean, except that facts he believed so strongly in were not so strong in belief after all?

Gilgamesh cut the water off with a sigh and toweled himself dry. He felt looser, relaxed in ways he missed and longed for. That inevitable tie to Silver already once more strong as a heartbeat—and then the Chosen Shield to whom he gifted a fraction of himself, a Mark upon the boy to stand with the Chosen King that thrummed within the faint confines of his breast, another tie—and Gilgamesh wrapped the towel about his waist and tucked it close. The motion was once familiar, although he found it much harder with the lack of an arm which led to a faint huff of displeasure and the thought to draw upon the souls in his service to gift himself an arm to use, but he didn’t. First, Silver would call that ‘cheating’ which he’d heard plenty of two thousand years prior to today, and second, the action tired him in truth. He drained himself in that battle against the Chosen Shield which had turned from a battle of skill to one of attrition to one that he eventually lost but lost with a small joy in his heart since the boy was bound to the one to end the Night Eternal.

It took Gilgamesh to slam his hip into the wall to pin the towel in place before he got it wrapped and bound around his hips, but he succeeded. Cleaned for the first time in a millennia Gilgamesh opened the door to the privy and stepped out into the caravan, only to blink and fumble at the resounding shriek from the young and the clothes suddenly thrown into his face. Gilgamesh held the clothes out and then eyed the faces, red and flushed that they were, with faint confusion.

“Get dressed, Gil!” Silver said with a shriek, and Gilgamesh eyed the way his flush went down his neck before he shrugged and tugged on the offered shirt and eyed the offered breeches with a faint raised brow.

Gilgamesh tugged the towel loose and heard a faint, “Oh fuck what is he _doing_ Prompto?” from whom he thought was the Chosen King but he felt himself far more focused on the breeches and the determination of how to get them on one handed. He never had the best skill at dressing with an arm occupied, so to have one missing left him even more in a state of concern. Especially given these breeches were strange in material and form.

“He’s naked. Why is he naked,” Cor muttered. “Fuck I need a drink.”

“Here,” the Chosen Shield said hoarsely as he handed over a glass bottle of some sort that Gilgamesh could see from the corner of his yes. “Iggy _don’t look_.”

“…he’s rather nicely proportioned, isn’t he?”

“ _Iggy!_ ”

Gilgamesh got one foot, and then one leg into the breeches before he resigned himself to the requirement of being seated to get the pants on. From the bed with which he sat upon Silver snorted, and then burst into a fit of giggles and Gilgamesh allowed his lips to curl up into a pleased smirk. _That_ was the sound he aimed for with this entire brazen display even if most of it had been a truthful fight with the lack of arm and strange breeches aside.

“You are such a fucking tease, Gil,” Prompto snorted into a pillow, and Gilgamesh hummed once he finally got the breeches up and past his hips. “Holy _shit_.”

Gilgamesh, once the breeches were on, couldn’t quite determine how to tie them closed. The hand some button, and a metal trap, but beyond that he left them as is since they lacked the normal ties. Silver would clue him in if the blond knew, otherwise another outraged cry would give him the result he needed. It only took time, and Gilgamesh was long used to a patient wait of time.

“Your friends act as if they have never been to a bathhouse,” Gilgamesh uttered in the languid way of one of the truly indolent.

“They don’t have bathhouses anymore, Gil,” Silver said bluntly.

“Truly?”

Across the way the wheat-haired child pushed upon his face his spectacles, the Hand of the Chosen King if Gilgamesh understood matters properly, and began to speak aloud, “Public bathing houses went out of style nearly eight hundred years ago. While there are still public amenities in much of the outlying lands within the Kingdom they have privacy barriers following the more conservative mindset of today’s age.”

Gilgamesh sighed and uttered, “A pity. I shall have to find other means, then.” Gilgamesh watched how the Hand furrowed his brow and puzzled over his words when Silver cackled and nudged him into the side.

“He means he’s gotta find another way to be a _tease_ ,” Silver uttered, and Gilgamesh enjoyed the way the faces around him brightened even as he reached out a hand to clasp at Silver’s wrist again.

“Indeed,” Gilgamesh murmured. “You used to turn such an interesting shade of red.”

Silver waved his free hand, especially when the Chosen King looked between them interested. He said a short, “Not like _that_ , Noct. Gil’s just…got a weird sense of humor.”

“I’ll say,” Cor Leonis uttered, face pinched, and Gilgamesh smiled in his direction. It held teeth and the curl of something vicious behind it, of a dangerous predator on the hunt, and Cor Leonis turned his head to the side and away with a faint dusting of his cheeks.

“Behave,” Silver uttered and smacked Gilgamesh lightly on the head, to which he rolled his eyes and said nothing. Silver knew his habits and his tastes truly well, after all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ardyn did not expect _this_.

“We need to find Ardyn,” Prompto said into the tense air the following morning. Noctis eyed him blearily with a pillow hugged tight to his chest; Gladio sweat-soaked from his morning run, leaned against the door with his arms crossed and Ignis seated in one of the chairs with a can of Ebony in hand.

Cor sat next to Ignis, leaned away from Gilgamesh who cleaned a blade on the second bed in the small caravan. Gilgamesh didn’t even look up as Gladio and Ignis traded looks, or how Cor watched him with lips pressed together. Prompto waited for someone to say something— _anything_. No one spoke up, and so with a groan of frustration Prompto threw his hands into the air.

“Come on!” Prompto cried out. “Don’t you guys have any shit to say?”

Nothing—until Cor sighed heavily and mumbled something about Lucis Caelum’s and _bullshit_ and then clearly uttered, “He’s the Chancellor of Niflheim. You would put Noctis at risk.”

Noctis shrugged and buried his face into the pillow. What he said was muffled enough that no one could quite understand him, but Prompto still tilted his head in the blue-black haired man’s direction with a faint frown.

“Noct…” Prompto said, voice soft, and Noctis raised his head lightly to look back with his face just the slightest bit pinched and Prompto—Prompto couldn’t identify the feeling that curled in his gut, but he didn’t quite like it.

Gilgamesh set the blade down and breathed out heavily enough to flutter the long white locks of his hair and spoke his words with care. “Ardyn is not the man we knew.”

“ _Bullshit_ ,” Prompto snapped out. “I refuse—”

“He _changed_ ,” Gilgamesh uttered sharply and Prompto went silent. “He changed, Silver. The Gods gave him his Path and he walked it _willingly_.”

Prompto shook his head, forcefully, and hissed between his teeth, “Yeah, he _saved lives_ but I refuse to believe some nonsense about him _changing_ from it.”

“Even you saw—”

“I saw a man grow sick!” Prompto snapped out, loud enough into the silence and loud enough to draw Noctis fully away from the pillow with brow furrowed. “I saw a man grow tired! I saw a man suffer under his ideals and suffer from the points of difference from his brother! I saw a man who felt so assured that the Gods would provide him aide—that his marriage would be the catalyst he needed, that the Crystal would keep him _safe_ —and I saw a man who had no idea he would walk into his Confirmation alone and _betrayed!_ ”

Gilgamesh quieted, and then look away for a moment. It was odd for Prompto to see the normally stiff man for all his talk of duty seem so contrite. Prompto breathed heavily, and startled when Noctis reached out and grabbed his arm. For a second Prompto stared at the young face of his friend, stared at a face he could barely remember, and then Noctis bowed his head.

“We’ll make it right,” Noctis said, voice soft and firm and Prompto felt something in him _choke_. “It needs to be made right.”

Cor sighed heavily and leaned forward, onto his knees. After a second he scoffed and gave a bitter sort of laugh. “If only Regis could hear you say that.”

Noctis looked to Cor. “Why?”

Cor looked back and said, “Because you sounded just like your mother.” For a moment no one said anything and then Noctis straightened his back.

“See, Prom?” Noctis said with a grin not quite as forced. “We’ll make it right.”

* * *

 

Ardyn frowned lightly at the reports Verstael forwarded his way. He grabbed a hand around the Atissian wine that he’d taken as a drink within the confines of his room at the Leville as he worked through the data and the reports from three separate MT Technicians. All of them lined up together and sold the same sordid tale—and it had to be a _lie_. Ardyn’s hand tightened on the wine glass hard enough it could crack.

 _“I’ve had them interrogated separately and still their story remains the same,”_ Verstael’s voice rang out from the phone that Ardyn had laid out onto the table, the call settled into speaker so that he could read and focus at once.

“Yet they do not describe this unmentionable, ancient horror,” Ardyn drawled out, voice faintly edged in bitterness. On the screen Verstael rolled his eyes, the wrinkled face pulled tight into a scowl, but Ardyn did not care.

Three days; for one week the boys remained in Lestallum by all reports, and then nearly five days earlier they moved from Lestallum to Old Lestallum and there they remained until the past three days. They’d begun to move, _finally_ , and yet it remained so frustratingly far from Cape Caem. Ardyn could not tell what the blasted boy-king thought he was doing. What motivated this new tour of the Lucian countryside? A drive around Duscae and Cleigne, up into the Vesperpool—yet not south toward Cape Caem with the ship that inevitably awaited them.

“What of the dear Commodore?” Ardyn questioned. “Has she had anything to say?”

Verstael sighed heavily. _“Ardyn, you know that I have no inclusion or control over the army or it’s mercenaries. You will have to ask that boy you’ve taken to traveling with for answers from her.”_

“Jealous?” Ardyn questioned, tone light, even as his gaze tracked to Verstael’s horribly old face with sharp golden eyes.

 _“Hardly_ ,” Verstael scoffed. _“What you deign to do in your time is upon you. As long as it does not interfere in my work I could care less.”_

“Are you certain of that, my dear?”

 _“Completely.”_ Verstael’s gaze was a baleful one, full of age and frustration that brought a smile to Ardyn’s face. _“When will you return to Gralea?”_

“Once my work here is completed, you have my assurance,” Ardyn said. “I will be back in time for your little pet project. Promise!”

_“If that is all, then? Or do you have more things to waste my time with?”_

Ardyn waved a hand with a murmured, “No, no, Verstael. I will call you if I have need of you.” The line disconnected as Ardyn returned his gaze back to the empty reports with a frown. The best he could get out of the mess had been that this ‘ancient horror’ wielded too many blades to be human, or so the Technicians thought from what little they could see in the distance.

“I wonder…” Ardyn tapped at his lip and leaned back in his chair, coat around him like skirts and wings as he stared at the map that accompanied the reports. All of the attacks had been around Taelpar Crag, within at least twenty miles of the place all told. Ardyn swiped one finger across the screen to toss aside the map and the written reports in favor of the few photographs they had captured. These were grainy, pathetic sort of things with poor visibility, but then Niflheim seemed to lack much of the same technological advances of the Kingdom of Lucis.

One picture forced Ardyn to pause, finger hovered over the screen as he stared into the grainy image of a being with spectral arms that fanned out from a back like wings. “Ah…” Ardyn breathed, golden eyes suddenly bright as every part of him seemed to still and writhe all at the same time. “Gilgamesh.” His hand squeezed reflexively around the wine glass until it shattered as ichor black tears dripped from his eyes, skin suddenly too-pale too-sick. His voice had a much more guttural quality to it, too, more of a growl than anything.

“I wonder what drew you out of your little _cavern_ , _old friend,_ ” Ardyn said, tone light, even as his lips curled up with a snarl. He let go of the ruins of the wine glass and shook out his now soaked hand. The other grasped his hat and tugged it low and onto his head as he ducked his gaze downward and pushed himself up from the plush chair to stand.

Atissia and the Tide Mother could wait. Ardyn had a cave full of the dead to interrogate.

* * *

Ardyn could remember the room in which they stored the Crystal in Civitas Lucii. A tall tower that Somnus would spend decades building upon, that his descendants would build upon, until it formed the foundation of Insomnia’s Citadel. Then it was stone and marble and near thirty years of work, blood, sweat, and tears with carpets in pale reds and blues with a view of all Civitas Lucii, open archways that were to eventually house windows and furnishings. Ardyn could remember how he stumbled into the room, limp controlled and back stiff. He could remember how the people whispered—how Somnus leaned hunched in the shadows alongside a marble pillar, head ducked low and brow furrowed.

Aera stood before the Crystal with Gilgamesh at her side. She smiled when Ardyn entered the room, yet now thinking back upon it he wondered if that smile ever reached her eyes. When Somnus revealed his treachery, that the kindness in his brother’s heart had fully fallen into the bitterness and fighting that they devolved into over the years, it hurt in the ways that it didn’t hurt. Ardyn could remember feeling faint enough as it was; he’d traveled the time from Steyliff Grove in the Vesperpool all the way to Civitas Lucii alone, with barely any chance for rest in the dark as his blood burned black and his pains increased tenfold.

What Ardyn couldn’t remember was Aera’s face. Had she known? Had Gilgamesh? His Shield had stood with hand on Aera, held her back—or had Ardyn imagined that? Perhaps Gilgamesh played to the hold of his beloved Aera, played to keep her away until it was time for her to fall into unnecessary sacrifice—to spill her blood and her magic so that they could be the catalyst for his chains in the darkness. At any case the memories were a mess, swamped in inconsequential things from the people he’d devoured in fits and spurts after he found himself awake from Angelguard.

“And what does it matter?” Ardyn murmured to himself as he flung a wrist covered in purple-black magic infested Scourge at the Spirit that stood in his way. He watched near dispassionately as the bones crumbled to dust and the body it inhabited forced the spectral form into release. He watched how the Spirit flew backward and into the wall, then crumbled and burst into little lights, only to disappear into the aether. “He made his choice, did he not?”

Three more came at him, and Ardyn tugged his blade free from the armiger and moved with a mix of warping, phasing, and slicing through the creatures. Gilgamesh had abandoned his duty as Shield, his Oaths and the whispers he’d made in the dark when Ardyn found himself at the lowest. Ardyn couldn’t be certain if the man had even abandoned Somnus in the end, although given the supposed exile Ardyn didn’t doubt that. Such a traitorous friend, Gilgamesh. He scoffed as he rendered the next three skeletal opponents to dust and ashes and Scourge.

“And now he deigns to walk the land he’d forsaken? What oddity, Gilgamesh, has attracted your eye I wonder?” Ardyn flicked his blade away as he moved further into the caverns. No doubt something drew the beast of a man out of his saturated home. Gilgamesh was inordinately stubborn—it made him a good Shield, until that fateful day with the fateful Confirmation on Ardyn’s shoulders, sham that it was.

Finally Ardyn reached the point past the bridge where Gilgamesh made his little foundling home. Ardyn wrinkled his nose and pursed his lips at the sight of the mess, at the cold river that ran past half and the slope half caked in shit and debris. It took him a moment to gather up the strength to push past what amounted to nothing more than squalor—and the disgust and bitterness that welled up at the thought of one of _his_ left to rot in something so destitute. Inside faired no better, although Ardyn noted how Gilgamesh took to looting the dead given the varied trinkets that littered the man’s hovel of a home.

“How…quaint,” Ardyn mumbled. His Shield had become a hoarder of things, so utterly unlike the man from the years before. Gingerly Ardyn picked up a few small trinkets to inspect, to see where the mind of the man he’d once cared for had gone in the intervening years—and he noticed a pattern.

Lucian finery and jewels adorned in subtle skulls littered the place; Tenebraean signatory and Oracle Ascension coins from the lapse in time were piled together, separated by year. Ardyn ran his fingers over a few with wide eyes, surprised to see items that went back as far as Civitas Lucii—coins stamped with Somnus’ visage, with Aera’s—and then others with familiar faces. Ardyn stopped at one Ascension coin that held a face so similar to Aera’s, one he knew just as well.

“Nubis…?” Ardyn murmured, surprised. He had not realized that Nubis had been crowned _Oracle_ ; the boy had barely bested twenty last Ardyn saw him and seemed to have not a lick of the magical talent of his older and Chosen Sister. In fact if Ardyn were to be certain the young man had been utterly besotted with—“Ah,” Ardyn set the coin down as the thought crossed his mind.

Nubis had longed after the young Stella Nox, the Lady Tenebrae. Ardyn couldn’t believe he hadn’t quite seen it before—but then there was nearly two thousand years and who knows how many generations between them, and how was Ardyn to know the manner in which the Mils Fleuret came the Nox Fleuret? Let alone how they came to occupy a land whose name derived from the very vassals he’d once grown surrounded by. He’d long slept through that sort of history, and it wasn’t a history the world deigned to remember. Much how the world forgot _him_ ….

Ardyn stepped around the piles of trinkets and cocked his head in mild surprise at the sight of hoarfrost that coated what looked to be an otherwise mid-cooked stew. For a second Ardyn wanted to trail his fingers in the mess, feel the bite and sting of the dead that signaled Gilgamesh’s favored brand of magic, but he restrained himself. If Gilgamesh were still the same man underneath it all he’d not leave food untended for long—unless whatever called him forth from his cavern of exile held far more sway than the dinner he froze solid in the urge to _catch it_.

For a moment Ardyn wanted to reach into the core of himself, to grip tight along the bond to Gilgamesh and then rend it asunder—coat it thick in Scourge and tear it into twine no matter the pain he’d feel. Only one thing could draw Gilgamesh out like this, and since he’d been seen in the presence of _Noctis_ —Ardyn ground his teeth together and turned. With a storm at his feet he moved swiftly from the cave, through the walls. Halfway mid-step he slipped into the Scourge and let it drag him along, out and _away_ , until the burn of the sun touched him and staggered him back into form.

He could deal with this, Ardyn realized in the heat of the sun as he returned to the drop ship that carried him here. If Gilgamesh desired to bind himself to _another_ King, while still within the service of Ardyn for a given means of that service, Ardyn could _use_ this. It meant a few changes to the grand plan, but oh, perhaps he would even enjoy this better. A chance to live out more than revenge through surrogacy and the hated bloodline of his hated brother—here, now, Ardyn found himself being given a _gift_. If Gilgamesh desired to step into the world once more, let him. Ardyn would happily break the man apart at the seams.

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid calls and the plot comes knocking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a story, Shield of the Healer, that gave this AU group its name (The Burning of Solheim) and details the last time Gilgamesh saw Ardyn before his Confirmation. It's mostly there to poke holes--no, joking, it's there to add lore details and just. Gilgamesh wouldn't shut up until I wrote it, ok?!
> 
> Aside from that--work, and sick, have ruled my life these weeks and so I haven't been able to write really. But I sat down and finished this chapter, which initiates where the story begins to turn a bit.
> 
> Also hints at to what each of the Oaths that Ignis, Gladio, and Prompto gave entail.

The call came early in the morning from Cid to Cor. Out of the entire sudden party of six only Cor, Ignis, Gladio, and Gilgamesh where awake just yet. Ignis had only just stumbled out of the tent he shared with Noctis, hair sleep-messed and glasses half-askew for the motion. The King wouldn’t be awake for a few hours more, since the sun had barely risen over the eastern mountain ridge of the Ravatogh Trail, and Prompto seemed content to sleep in after the night they had the day previous.

Gilgamesh noticed the sound of the ringtone first, and he tilted his head Cor’s direction. The braid of his hair tumbled down his shoulder and mixed with the long, clasped bangs that framed the taller man’s face. The interest made Cor stiffen his spine even as the man asked, politely, “What unearthly sound is that?”

“Phone,” Cor said, voice tense because there were a scant few people who even had his number these days and would deign to call him. He dug the hone out of his Crownsguard fatigue’s while Ignis began to pull out food from the armiger to start on breakfast.

“Are omelets alright with everyone this morning?” Ignis called out to the camp as Cor finally got his phone out of his pocket. He stared at Cid’s number for the longest moment and let the phone ring, then shook his head.

“That’s fine, Ignis. I need to take this,” Cor said, stood, and walked off the edge of the Haven. He kept the party in his sights even as he tapped the answer call button and braced himself for Cid’s usual antics. “Leonis.”

 _“Well I’ll be damned, ya picked ‘er right up fer once. Was ‘fraid I’d need to give a second or third call,”_ Cid drawled along the line and Cor pursed his lips.

“Very funny,” Cor said.

_“I guess hangin’ out with those boys is doin’ some sorta good fer ya, eh, Cor?”_

Cor sighed and dragged a hand along his face. He turned from the camp for a moment and prayed for patience—and reminded himself that Cid was a dear _friend_ even if he was almost forty years Cor’s senior.

“Old man,” Cor said tiredly, “why are you calling.”

 _“Who you callin’ old?”_ Cid harrumphed, then sighed a second later with a grunt that Cor presumed meant Cid had finally found a chair to settle into. A second later the faint groan of relief brought a smile to Cor’s face as Cid mumbled, _“Ah, hells. I am old.”_

“Admitting it? Will wonders never cease?” Cor teased lightly, and then shook his head and his face turned towards seriousness once more. “Although really, Cid. Why are you calling?”

Cor waited, half-turned to view the Haven once more. He watched as Prompto crawled out of the tent and scrubbed at his hair and his chin-fuzz with a wide yawn, and how Gilgamesh—who’d been staring and Cor really wished the other man _wouldn’t_ ; he was half-certain that Gilgamesh was going to stab him as time went on with how the man just _looked_ at him—Gilgamesh immediately moved to grasp Prompto by the wrist. Cor might’ve found it odd how Prompto favored the well-worn travel clothing that they found him in compared to his Crownsguard fatigues if Cor didn’t realize that ten years instilled into Prompto some form of habit and figured for both Prompto and Gilgamesh the clothes were something of a comfort. Cor hadn’t missed the way that Prompto tugged them out of a very much _red_ armiger compared to Noctis’ colder blue, or even Regis’ icy silver.

 _“It’s done, Cor,”_ Cid eventually spit out. _“That EXTERNIS gal o’ yers delivered the tempered mythril yesterday and I jes got up an’ finished installin’ it inta place. Them boys are all good t’head on off an see that Oracle o’ theirs.”_

Cor breathed out heavily and felt his shoulders relax just the slightest bit. Hopefully with the reminder that Lunafreya awaited them in Altissa, and the fact that the Royal Vessel was now operational meant the tenseness that each and every one of them were ignoring could be dealt away with for the more immediate problem. Honestly Cor felt thankful that the poor woman hadn’t gone and dragged Leviathan awake just yet, considering what a right mess to Altissa that would eventually be given the rumors Cor heard from the lips of Imperial’s and Hunters about the mess _Titan_ made of Duscae and Cleigne.

 _Astrals_ , Cor thought disdainfully, _were terrible weapons of mass destruction_. They were _worse_ when they were awake compared to when sleeping. Cor would never forget the day that Regis summoned _Ramuh_ of all the deities from a dainty little _crystal_ the bastard found back in their youth. It was one of Regis’ godsdamned adventures Cor was rather glad to not have been originally brought in on, if just the aftermath had nearly wasted a good chunk of Duscae for nearly ten years.

“We’re about six hours out of Caem,” Cor said eventually when Cid made an inquisitive _‘Cor?’_ on the other end of the line. “Up in Ravatogh Trail.”

 _“What in tarnation are you boys doin’ all the way up there?”_ Cid demanded.

“Hunting,” Cor said dryly.

_“Well finish up and get yer behinds down here, kid! I ain’t got all the time in the world to waste, ya know!”_

“Yeah, yeah,” Cor let the smile cross his lips. “We’ll head your way as soon as His Majesty wakes up.”

Cid harrumphed. _“Damn spoiled brats. Sleepin’ in when there’s work t’be done.”_

Cor hummed in agreement. He didn’t bother to remind Cid that the magic of the Crystal took a lot out of its Kings. Cid knew that well in hand already. Lamenting Regis’ desire to sleep in had been nothing more than teasing between them, Clarus, and Weskham back in the day rather than anything serious. It was the days where Regis slept too much or too little that brought to mind worry; Cor wondered if they boys felt the same about Noctis. Still that ended the conversation pretty neatly, so Cor hung up without further word. He’d probably get an earful from Cid when they reached Caem for hanging up like that, but Cor didn’t quite care.

They’d be on their way to Altissa by tomorrow, and Cor could go back to figuring out what sort of bullshit nonsense Niflheim was up. This back and forth in occupation, and the fact that the gates to Insomnia were _still_ closed, did not bode well to Cor. He had his own work he needed to get to, and while he cared for the boys he couldn’t stay with them. He wanted to—Six _knows_ Cor wanted to stay with them and make sure they paid attention to the world around them instead of whatever nonsense they’d been doing before he’d been pulled into their messes—but they wouldn’t learn if he hovered. They needed to learn. They needed to be their own men.

Cor would only drag them down with his memories.

* * *

 

Noctis woke up to an empty tent, something he found himself steadily grown used to over the past several days. It still bothered him, like an itch that he couldn’t quite reach at the small of his back. For a moment he lay there and stared up at the ceiling of the tent in silence. He felt empty; a whole ripped through his chest filled with nothing reminded him of the days after he woke up to know Prompto was _gone_. Then Noctis breathed and closed his eyes—he felt for the bond to his retainers—

_I offer my life into service—_

_—to guard and protect from all threats both within and out—_

_—as the blade to pierce through the darkness—_

_—never to be alone, forgotten, or without a companion in the moments where his steps may falter—_

_—for my King of Light, forevermore._

Noctis relaxed slightly at the feel of it—of his Hand, and his Shield, and of Prompto whose Oaths were so unorthodox that they didn’t _have_ a title with them. He could feel where the pieces of themselves twined in with the pieces of himself—or the pieces that he could touch and use, as jagged and broken that they were. Ignis, Gladio and Prompto gave him something as much as he gave _them_ something. Noctis shared with them his Light, the magic that family history claimed to come from the Crystal. They shared in return with him the stabilizing presence of their very lives.

“Okay,” Noctis breathed out and pushed himself up. He clenched a fist over his chest and sucked in a breath, only to release it a second later with another reminded, “Okay.” Fortified Noctis rubbed the sleep from his eyes and shifted onto his hands and knees so that he could craw out of the sleeping bag. It took a little focus, more than it would when the rest of his mind started to function beyond the haze of waking up and waking up alone, but Noctis eventually got the sleeping bag back into the armiger and his change of clothes out of it.

The young King spent fifteen minutes working through his clothes, half seated and half crawling in and out of each piece before he folded the articles of dirty clothing—something he did on rare occasion—and focused on the space in the armiger that held the laundry they hadn’t gotten around to yet. Sometimes Noctis couldn’t be certain if the clothes ever made it to the right part of the space of his magic, so tired like this, but this morning he wasn’t as dazed as he could be, so Noctis felt reasonably assured that the clothes made it to where he wanted and not, accidentally, at the top of Ravatogh.

Noctis sniffed at his Crownsguard fatigue jacket as he crawled his way out of the tent and made a slight face at the smell that wafted off of it—perhaps they needed to make a stop to the nearest laundromat, he thought with his nose scrunched up as he made his way into the brightness of the sun. It took half-a-second before the sudden blindness associated with light washed away and Noctis was able to drag himself to his feet.

“Morning,” Noctis mumbled, and accepted the fresh plate of breakfast from Ignis. He took a bite without even really looking, then paused to stare down at the plate almost uncomprehendingly when he realized it was _eggs_ with a large whopping of bits of meat cooked into it. Noctis dug his fork around the omelet for a second and raised his eyebrows when he saw no squirreled away vegetables in the meat.

“Is something wrong?” Ignis questioned, lips tugged into a frown, and Noctis jerked his head up and around.

“What? No,” Noctis shook his head and stuffed another forkful of the omelet into his mouth. Zu eggs that they gathered out of the nest about two weeks back when they went and visited the Royal Tomb rumored to be nestled in the volcano itself, Noctis realized. They had a different sort of texture when cooked compared to most of the domesticated eggs that one could get at the marketplace. He knocked around the meat a bit more before he realized it was Spiracorn and not Garula. “Foods good, Specs.”

Ignis smiled, relieved, and Noctis flopped himself down into one of the camper chairs to finish eating. It wasn’t a lie, even—the food _was_ good. The initial surprise had been from the fact that Ignis hadn’t bothered to sneak in any veggies. Noctis had grown used to taking that first bite in the mornings, only to taste something unholy followed by the need to dig out all of the pesky things from an otherwise succulent meal. Prompto would steal them off of his plate—the heathen _loved_ vegetables for some reason—but instead there’d been nothing. Noctis tried to remember the last time he had a bite of food in the breakfast with the taste of some vegetable and found himself unable to recall.

With a mouthful of food Noctis glanced over to where Ignis had begun clean up of the cooking supplies with a hum. Had Ignis stopped sneaking vegetables in Noctis food out of some sort of _regret_? The man knew Noctis gave them all to Prompto, anyway. His disgust and distaste for the food was legendary and it took work for the royal kitchens to find ways to accommodate Noctis. The thought and care implied in the fact that Ignis had done away with vegetables in Noctis’ food was something he hadn’t even _thought_ about until now.

Once the plate was cleared Noctis moved to wash it, only for Ignis to take it from him without a word and begin to clean. It gave Noctis further pause, surprised at Ignis’ nonchalance and it struck something within Noctis that left him heavy hearted. He looked over to Gladio who sipped at some water with a book in hand, then to Prompto who looked right at him with an unreadable expression. His wrist was grasped yet again in Gilgamesh’s only hand, and Noctis wanted to frown at it—but he’d seen the man wake up in the middle of the night with a sharp breath and twist around until he could grasp at Prompto’s wrist and found himself unable to.

It reminded Noctis of how he’d wake and seek out the feel of Prompto at his heart; how Noctis found comfort in the Oaths Promised that made ties to each of his retinue. He couldn’t be jealous when this ancient man didn’t have that comfort like Noctis. It made the young monarch wonder how other people sought comfort in those closest to them when they couldn’t _feel_ the very souls bound to theirs. After a second Noctis turned away and looked over to Cor who stood off to the side with his head bowed low, and decided that if Ignis wanted to clean and Gladio wanted to read, then Noctis would bother the Immortal instead.

“Silver for your thoughts?” Noctis asked, and when Cor made a confused sort of sound in the back of his throat Noctis’ lips curled into a slight smile.

“I thought the phrase was _gil for your thoughts?_ ” Cor asked and Noctis shrugged.

“Maybe?” Noctis said and turned his gaze toward the sky. “Although I always thought it was crowns.” He looked over at Cor, curious. “Is it a currency thing, then?”

“Ah, yeah,” Cor blinked. “Is there anything you need, your highness?”

Noctis said a blunt, “You looked lonely,” to which Cor snorted and then shook his head.

“Of course.” For a moment the Immortal said nothing more, then stretched and looked over the camp with a critical eye. “Cid called this morning.” Noctis stilled, the breath stolen from his lungs. He knew what Cid calling meant. Aranea gave them a huge chunk of mythril before they left Lestallum to meet Prompto. Cor made sure the metal got delivered to EXTERNIS for processing, but if Cid called then it was probably already installed.

“I see,” Noctis said after a moment, head ducked down. The Royal Vessel—with it ready they could head to Altissa. Noctis would see Luna again, for the first time in twelve years. He knew she planned to summon Leviathan; he understood that she sought to forge the Covenants for him now, something he hadn’t truly understood until after the blessing of Ramuh completed itself in Fociaugh Hollow.

For weeks after Fociaugh Hollow Noctis wondered why Luna decided that they needed the Covenants with the Astrals. She knew just as well as he did that to wake them one after another like this was dangerous. Noctis anticipated the need to gain that Astrals blessings—he knew about the Prophecy in the loosest sense, and knew that as the foretold King of Light he’d need the Astrals to defeat the darkness, but he didn’t understand why _now_. He’d originally thought the darkness maybe meant Nifflheim after they attacked and stole the Crystal from Insomnia. Perhaps that was what Noctis had been meant to defeat—Insomnia’s ancient enemy.

Except Noctis knew he wouldn’t need _all_ of the Six for something so paltry as a fight with another nation. Only Titan or Ramuh could lay waste to the entirety of the MT units Nifflheim could throw at them if needed. Then Prompto vanished and came back with talk about the Scourge and daemons and that these were a disease—that people called it the darkness when they didn’t call it the Scourge—and there was a Healer King tasked to end it. A Healer King still alive today and working with the very people who stole his Crystal and killed his Father, even, who was related to Noctis with some two-thousand year difference. What then did that make Noctis in the grand scheme of things? The second choice of the Six to fix what had been broken about the world?

No one really knew where the Scourge came from these days, or that it was even a _thing_ beyond that at night daemons roamed the world and would kill you. They knew the Haven’s kept people safe, that lights kept the daemons out, but what else did they know about the fiends of the dark, really? Certainly, Noctis hadn’t known they were _people_ , sick and malformed people, but they’d been people once and possibly could be again someday.

Ardyn failed to stop it, the Scourge; he grew sick with it instead. How could Noctis finish it then? Noctis whose magic was so terribly broken and mostly out of reach—who lacked the soul-weary Ring of the Lucii that his forefathers used to channel the Crystal’s blistering Light. All Noctis had were the Covenants, and even then Luna forged them so fast and so quickly that Noctis worried they’d even be able to get the remaining three after Leviathan without consequence.

“Your Majesty?” Cor asked, and Noctis blinked out of his thoughts.

“Sorry,” Noctis mumbled and gave Cor a hesitant smile. “Just…surprised.” Cor nodded and Noctis carefully relaxed himself from his tense thoughts. “Can you do something for me, Cor?”

“What do you need?” Cor asked, face serious.

“Find Ardyn for me,” Noctis said, words soft but with the bit of steel behind them that he rarely used. He looked over to Cor and watched the way the other man looked at him back, the way his brow twitched and his eyes narrowed. “I need to have a discussion with the Chancellor.” Noctis waited until Cor nodded before he smiled his thanks. “I’ll go let the others know to pack up then.”


	12. Chapter 12

Car rides were cramped. With four people who stood at or over six feet in height obviously car rides would be cramped. They’d spent days just figuring out how to situate one another so that the damn things could pass by without the need for too frequent breaks in the countryside as the hours of driving past them by, but some things just couldn’t be helped. Gilgamesh, at seven feet, could only have Prompto on his lap for so long before his legs ached. It didn’t help that Noctis utterly _refused_ to settle in the passenger seat up front, and so Gladio in all of his six-foot six glory had to cram himself behind Ignis’ long legs.

Needless to say the normally three hour drive from Ravatogh to Caem would take the six that Cor claimed only because the number of breaks needed and not because, as Cid would claim, the boys wanted to stop and fish at every damned fishing hole they could find. While Cor felt certain that the boys, or rather Noctis in particular, would like to spend each stop fishing Cor knew them to be a bit more efficient than that.

“We should take a photo here,” Prompto murmured as he looked out over the railing of the road where they stopped. His arms were crossed over the metal as he stared out over the trees of the Leirity Seaside. From next to him Gilgamesh snorted.

Cor tried to ignore the conversation and stretch his back against the railing instead. He felt a faint pop and he knew it shouldn’t feel as good as it did, but damn if it didn’t ease some sort of tension somewhere. Then it started to hurt and with a wince Cor pulled away—he was getting _old_ and the reminder made a small part of himself curl up and want to cry; the small, angry and utterly uncaring of his own life part of himself that he worked hard to bury with little success after he foolishly took on Gilgamesh.

“If it shall keep—” Gilgamesh started to say before Cor interrupted.

“Five more minutes,” Cor called to the group, and he missed a good chunk of what Gilgamesh said next.

“—from their assault upon my thighs,” Gilgamesh finished. Cor only blinked before Prompto turned from the railing, eyes wide and brows up, lips pulled apart in shock, before everything narrowed into utter outrage.

“I do _not_ have a bony ass!” Prompto shrieked.

Gladiolus snorted.

“I _don’t!_ ” Prompto insisted, firmly, and he crossed his arms over his chest and ground his teeth together. Cor wanted to sigh.

For a moment there was silence, then Gilgamesh smiled. It was a soft sort of thing that made Cor feel a little weird all things considered—he felt nauseated, and briefly wondered if that omelet didn’t agree with him. Then Gilgamesh opened his mouth to speak and Cor viciously buried the nausea under his need to be alert. He could be sick later when the King wasn’t in danger and they didn’t have an itinerary.

“I stand corrected of my ill-gotten assumption,” Gilgamesh demurred, and he ducked his head a little as he did so. The trails of the scarf that Gilgamesh wrapped around his head like a hood shifted with the movement a little. “Your posterior is far more akin to that of a flattened cake.”

Gladiolus snorted again, and promptly buried his face into his hands like he couldn’t _believe_ what he was hearing. Cor couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“A pancake,” Cor said. His tone was dry, short, but edged with a sort of faintness that only Cid or Weskham would detect if they listened. “You mean a pancake.”

Gilgamesh blinked and turned his gaze onto Cor who felt a flush rise along his neck and found himself in need to viciously squash down the nauseous feeling again.

“What is a…pancake?” Gilgamesh questioned.

Cor thought he heard Gladiolus say something that sounded vaguely like ‘oh my _six_ ,’ though muffled through his hands. He did see the way Ignis gripped Gladiolus’ shoulder tightly, eyes wide behind his glasses. He didn’t miss the way Noctis nearly doubled over with his own snort, or the way Prompto carefully edged from Gilgamesh to grasp the young monarch by the shoulder with the beginning of a smile curled at his lip.

“It’s—ah,” Cor floundered for half-a-second before he squared himself up and didn’t buckle under the seven foot behemoth of a man’s curious stare. “It’s a fluffy cake-like breakfast food fried in a pan, often accompanied by sweet toppings, sugar, and syrup.”

Gilgamesh eyed him, then smiled and said, “Ah. I shall have to try this pancake, then. Though I doubt Silver’s posterior shall taste ever as sweet.”

“ _GIL!_ ” Prompto shrieked, and Cor watched as the royal retinue and King lost it. Ignis barely contained his wheezed snort, and Noctis on the floor outright cackling. Prompto even seemed amused by the words despite his reddening face and outraged look, and out of them Gladiolus seemed _unamused_. He kept his face in the palms of his hands and muttered more words and Cor felt himself in kinship.

Then a second later Cor turned red when Gilgamesh shifted closer and said, tone deeper and softer, “Although I shall believe that _yours_ might make a wonderful, sweet, and _meaty_ breakfast treat. I would not mind it ridden upon my thighs so.” Cor stared as Gilgamesh’s lips curled up, and he couldn’t quite tear his eyes away from how they parted. “Might I propose a trade, then? To have you upon my lap for the rest of this daunting trip? Why it would be positively a _pleasure_ if you were to agree.”

Cor stiffened; this man was _wicked_ and he stumbled backward as he felt his stomach up in his throat.

Gilgamesh eyed him, then backed down with an uttered, “Ah, a check of rain then?” in some bastardized parody of a common colloquial phrase that had Prompto fall over into a fit of amusement.

Quickly the Immortal straightened himself up, lips pressed together into a scowl, and strode back toward the car with a barked out, “Five minutes are up!”

“Thank _Bahamut_ ,” Gladiolus mumbled.

* * *

 

Noctis stretched his back as he climbed out of the Regalia at the edge of Cape Caem. The cramped car ride had left plenty to be desired, but at least the journey had finally ended after six hours of inescapable travel later. Noctis wondered if Cindy was anywhere on the property still or if she returned to Hammerhead to continue to run the business there. Cid obviously remained, and really Cid deserved the rest that the lighthouse offered—if Noctis ignored the fact that Cid essentially just fixed up his father’s old royal vessel.

“Cid’ll be waiting at the dock,” Cor said as the last of the car doors slammed shut and everyone gathered in the gravel of the parking lot.

Noctis frowned lightly, uncertain if he wanted to just get right into it and gear up the vessel for the trip to Altissa or not. At the same time Noctis knew he couldn’t delay any further. Luna waited for him in Altissa to summon Leviathan and every day he delayed _more_ put the Oracle’s own safety at risk. No doubt Ravus informed Nifflheim and Aldercapt what the Covenent’s meant, what his sister was _doing_ —and it would only be time before they realized Leviathan was next on the list.

“And just where is this dock, anyway?” Gladio asked. His booted feet shifted on the gravel enough that Noctis glanced over to him, surprised—until Noctis remembered that none of his retainers actually visited the dock before. Out of everyone only Cor knew, and that was because Cor had been on the detail back then.

“There’s an elevator in the lighthouse,” Noctis said as he started his way up the path. Noctis tucked his hands into his pockets as he climbed, and the group fairly quickly formed up around him—at the rear Noctis could vaguely here Prompto and Gilgamesh get into some sort of soft, heated argument that threatened to bring the travel to a stop for all of a second. A glance from Noctis stopped whatever it was going on between those two, followed by a small frown, and the group continued their route up the path in relative silence.

Noctis preferred the quiet right now. It gave him time to think about the plan ahead—and he would need to have a plan ahead Noctis realized. Right now his plan mostly consisted of get to Altissa and find Luna which to be honest had been the plan since day one so that hadn’t _changed_. It felt weird to realize that he’d been working on the same basic plan since he first left Insomnia.

The party climbed past the house when Monica spotted them. Noctis knew it to be Monica from the way she uttered, “Cor?” in that strangled sort of way that Noctis could remember from his childhood. Noctis didn’t bother to pause in his climb up to the lighthouse except when he noticed Cor still next to him and turn with a faint bit of paleness to his cheeks.

“Monica,” Cor said, and Noctis turned to look at the second in command of the Crownsguard who stared at their group with a gaze so utterly devoid of emotion that it knocked Noctis off kilter for a second. He didn’t understand why Monica looked at them like that until he heard a slightly cut off, “Is that—” just as Cor said, “I can explain—”

 _Oh_ , Noctis thought faintly. _Right._ His gaze slid over to Prompto and Gilgamesh toward the back; Gilgamesh towered over everyone and had that tight grip upon Prompto’s wrist again, but unlike when they first dragged the man out of Taelpar Crag and into the wonders of how the world worked now, Gilgamesh had finally removed the majority of his armor and dressed down in a basic tunic with an attached hood that dipped low over his face and cast reddish-brown eyes into darkness.

“Cor Leonis,” Monica said, voice soft and it struck Noctis that she wasn’t looking at the party as a _whole_ with a blank face, but rather at Cor with a blank face and the tension drained from Noctis’ shoulders. “You are _Marshal_ of the Crownsguard, not a random field agent on a solo mission.” Cor winced. “A curtesy call for an update as to your status, or the status of those with whom you travel, is _expected_.”

“Monica—” Cor started, then paused, then sucked in a deep breath. “The situation changed.”

Monica eyed the group as a whole, and then turned back to Cor and gestured toward the house. “Inside.”

“Cid—”

“Is inside.”

Noctis turned and started for the house without a word, and at his back Gladio and Ignis followed after. Prompto hesitated for half-a-second before he tugged Gilgamesh to follow—only for Monica to raise a hand to forestall both from following directly after them. Noctis paused when he realized that she kept Prompto and Gilgamesh behind, even as Cor already drifted into her space and began to speak softly that they weren’t threats to Noctis’ safety.

“Uh,” Prompto glanced between them, then to Noctis. “Noct?”

Noctis frowned, took three quick steps until he was right next to Monica and Cor, who fell silent, and peered at the Crownsguard intently. “Is there a problem?”

Monica glanced to Cor, and then to Prompto and Gilgamesh, and then to Noctis and bowed her head lightly. “I apologize your highness. You may travel with whom you please, do not doubt, but without verification of—”

“Monica—” Cor started with a faint groan, but Noctis held up a hand so the Marshal quieted.

“I have with me my retinue,” Noctis said carefully, “and while yes, our newest member is for the most part a stranger—he is a stranger we have gotten to know for a few days already, and one who has come highly vetted as he can get by _two_ of my retinue, and by Cor.” Cor winced at that statement, and when Monica arched her eyebrows at him, he shrugged an agreement to the words.

“He is not lying,” Cor said. “Ah—I met Gilgamesh when I was young?”

“Gilgamesh?” Monica questioned, voice deadpan. “The Blademaster from Taelpar Crag.”

Cor nodded. “He is.”

“The _immortal_ who slaughtered far too many Crownsguard before you got it in your head to enter into a series of recently excavated caverns and, by the way it was told, pick a fight at the tender age of—fifteen? Sixteen? The one you nearly didn’t survive?”

Noctis snorted faintly at the way Cor seemed to shrink just a little bit downward. He could remember the man doing so few little times back in the Citadel, and always when Monica hunted him down to bring to his attention something or other that he decided to ignore. Gladio beside him canted his hip and crossed his arms in the way that meant he was enjoying the show, and Noctis didn’t doubt that Gladio had heard _stories_ growing up about Cor, or had some sort of insight as to why Monica seemed to be his minder in situations like these.

“Your point?” Cor demanded, but Gilgamesh chose then to speak up with a slight twist of his head as he regarded Monica, and then regarded the way Cor’s shoulders seemed to knot together.

“Out of all who challenged me, young Cor Leonis near bested,” Gilgamesh uttered. “His denial of the Calling at the Gates did not come without consequence; for Life in return an arm he took.” Gilgamesh glanced to Gladio. “Only one such as he I have faced ever since, and ever shall.”

Monica looked Gilgamesh up and down, and then glanced to Prompto before she turned back to Noctis with her hands placed upon her hips. “Very well. I can concede to…the Blademaster,” the words rang a bit sour, although Gilgamesh ducked his head in acknowledgement of the title. “Given that Cor is with you, and that young Gladiolus as well, but what of his blond companion?”

Noctis frowned. “His blond—you mean _Prompto?_ ” Noctis looked at Monica like he hadn’t seen her—she _knew_ Prompto. He she helped train him alongside Cor so that he would be considered good enough for this trip in the first place. She’d even been there when Prompto agreed to make his Oaths; how could Monica forgot all of that? Noctis glanced to Prompto, confused for a minute before he remembered—Steyliff.

“As I said,” Cor said when Monica’s entire countenance softened, especially at the way Noctis suddenly jerked his head away from her and from Prompto and stared off into the distance, “the situation changed, Monica. We will discuss it inside. Suffice to say that this _is_ Prompto Argentum.”

For a moment no one said anything, and then Monica sighed explosively. “Alright. We’ll discuss this—all of this—inside.” Noctis turned to glance at her again, with wide eyes. “Preferably now, your majesty.”

A second, and then Noctis nodded. This time unimpeded the group as a whole made their way inside. Monica took the lead with a comment about informing Dustin, and getting the children out of the way which led to Gladio’s sigh of relief. They could address the events without Iris or Talcott getting underfoot, and Iris would get underfoot at the least, Noctis knew. Hell, she probably had a few choice words for Gladio after all; Noctis hadn’t missed the way that Iris refused to send her older brother messages, or how it upset Gladio.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monica understands now why Cor drank after a particularly long day in the presence of King Regis, if this mess is anything to go by.

Cid took one look at the gathered people from where he lounged with a mug of coffee and uttered a short, “What the hell, kid? I thought ya up an’ stopped draggin’ yer ass into bullshit twenty years ago.”

“Fuck you,” Cor said bluntly in response, dropped into a chair, and grabbed Cid’s mug of coffee and drowned it.

“At least tell me the old girl’s still runnin’ right,” Cid harrumphed tiredly while the kids exchanged glances.

“The Regalia is _fine_ ,” Cor said.

“Six hours from _Ravatogh?_ ” Cid huffed, even as Cor gestured for everyone to settle down and Monica disappeared behind the half-wall of the kitchen to grab drinks. “Ain’t never taken six hours jes t’drive down from that hell pit.” Cid glanced at the group, and then side-eyed Cor a second later before he said, “Although I’d be surprised she fit you all well an’ good.”

“We didn’t break the _car_ , dammit,” Cor grumbled.

“I’ll be the judge o’ that one, brat. Now give me back my damned coffee,” Cid reached out for the cup but Cor kept it deftly away and drained the last of the dregs before he handed it back with a curled smile full of teeth. Cid huffed, then accepted the new mug from Monica with a, “Thanks, sweet’eart.”

Monica calmly passed out drinks for everyone, although she skipped Cor who frowned and looked half-a-second ready to demand a cup for himself, then thought better of it. Cid snorted. Clarus chose well when he made that girl in charge of the boy, and he shared a bit of a commiserating glance with her as she settled herself down, took a sip out of her own mug, and then settled it between her knees. “So.” She looked at them each in turn, enough to make all the boys squirm and Cid found himself with his own sharp grin at the thought.

Yes, Clarus chose well, Cid could admit. At least that kid had a decent head on his shoulders—and the sting of loss still felt a bit like a bitter thing; each of them boys were his, even if they hadn’t spoken in a good almost twenty-odd years. Cid sighed heavily and quickly tore the room’s attention from Monica, who would undoubtedly dither about the whole mess and he’d rather get to the root of the first problem before anything else.

“Well?” Cid said, tone short and leading. “You okay, boy?” He looked at Noctis as he spoke, but the words were for both Noctis and for Cor really. The last time he’d seen Cor the man had blown through Hammerhead looking like death warmed over, covered in cuts and more blood on the outside instead of his insides. He’d taken stock of the few curatives Cid kept around, already gone stale without Regis’ magic to hold them together, and then waltzed right back out of Cid’s life.

Noctis frowned, brow furrowed, and eyes narrowed at some point not on Cid’s face, which was all well and good, sure. At least the boy seemed to be thinking about shit, which was good, but that didn’t tell Cid _anything_ worthwhile, really. Lucis Caelum’s were a hard bunch to read for normal folk, and sometimes you had to just drag the truth out of them like fighting with a wet couerl kitten hissin’ and spittin’ lightning in your face.

“Ya don’t jes up an’ recover from a broken bond,” Cid said slowly. “An’ while I can see Cor’s little stray all well an’ good, that don’t mean shit unless you speak up boy.” Cid ignored the way Monica jerked her head in his direction; if the women wanted to be blind about the little Niff stray then that was her problem. Cid had no reason to ignore the truth bare in his face.

“I—” Noctis started, but the words cut off and Cid nodded sharply.

“You ain’t the first t’go through this shit,” Cid said after a moment. He stared down at his coffee with a frown. “I remember yer granddaddy an’ the wreck he was after he lost his Shield an’ Hand.” Cid breathed in deeply; he hadn’t liked remembering Mors back in those days, and he didn’t like remembering Mors in that aftermath even now. The Mors after the death of those closest to him—where the only reminders had been Regis and Clarus after all was said and done—lead to some shit decisions and choices.

Mors without his Shield and his Hand had been like a man without his conscience. Cid accepted the job to keep watch over Regis and Regis’ lot _because_ of that. He saw what Mors became, and hoped to keep Mors’ boy for becoming his daddy. He _thought_ he succeeded for a while, only for Regis to spit it all in his face at the end. Cid tightened his grip for half-a-second on his mug of coffee.

“Cid…” Cor said, voice soft—and just the barest hint of pain that thrummed under it. Cid looked to Cor and the way the kid looked stricken. Cid knew he never spoke of it—of how Mors changed, of how the broken bonds had utterly ruined a man he’d up and respected and almost swore his own Oaths to—just as Cid knew Cor never spoke of his time as Mors’ bodyguard, his Shield in all but title.

“What?” Cid huffed. “I’m _old_ , Cor. Ain’t no beatin’ ‘round it, and ain’t no reason to keep hidin’ it after what you boys said.” Cid turned his gaze back to Noctis. “Well, little King?”

Noctis swallowed, and heavily said, “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit,” Cid said sharply, but Noctis merely straightened his spine stubbornly and repeated himself. Cid shook his head and grumbled, “Too much of yer ma in ya,” under his breath before he turned his gaze onto the one armed behemoth and the Cor’s little Niff. “An’ you, boy? Whaddya say fer yerself? Ain’t no Shield or Hand, but that shit hurts don’t it?”

Cid watched how Prompto nibbled at his lip, and then glanced over at the behemoth beside him who seemed to be trying dissect Cid with his eyes. He dismissed the man a second later because he could see it on the boy, clearly, where he couldn’t see it on Noctis because Lucis Caelum’s were a special brand of stupid. He waited for Prompto to take in that shuddering breath, waited for the young man to settle himself.

“I had time,” Prompto said, voice soft. At his side his behemoth tightened the grip onto Prompto’s wrist and Cid glanced to him.

“I can see that, but I ain’t askin’ ‘bout yer tie to yer King,” Cid said, and his words were only marginally soft because as much as this kid was Cor’s stray Cid could see himself plain as day in that freckled face. He’d once been as young, refugee in a strange city-state with Niff-blond hair and freckles to his face. It wouldn’t surprise Cid in the least to find that Prompto came from some prominent Niff family somewhere—he had that touch about him. Cid waited for the boy to stiffen, then glance to Cor with surprised eyes. “No Cor ain’t said no word ‘bout nothin’. It’s plain on yer face, boy. So?”

“Cid,” Monica interrupted, and Cid wanted to cuss her out but refrained when Dustin came up behind her. There went any chance of getting any of those boys to speak up, least of all the behemoth who seemed to contemplate Cid’s words with the weight and gravitas they didn’t exactly hold, but implied. “You are speaking of things that—”

Cid growled and shoved himself to his feet with an angry huff. “If yer too damned blind to see that boy for who ‘e is it ain’t my problem. I’ve said my piece.” Tiredly Cid began to shuffle himself out of the shack. “Ya know where t’find me.”

* * *

 

Gilgamesh stood and muttered his excuse to the party shortly after Cid left, and Monica let him go with barely a thought. She wasn’t so foolish to consider the idea that she could contain the famed Blademaster, if that was whom he claimed to be. Cor only survived that mess through the fact that the man let him go, and Monica knew that well enough. The fact that the man had taken Gladio to the famed Proving Grounds—which were nothing more than a slaughterhouse in Monica’s opinion—already left her with the frustrating understanding that the man could very well be so. Instead she focused her attention on the other who claimed to be Prompto Argentum.

Ignis had reported upon Prompto Argentum’s untimely demise; Monica had taken to the ruins at the behest of Cor to ascertain the situation with the mercenary Highwind as a guide. She’d seen enough to doubt the boy would return ever again. The fact that the King definitely suffered from a sudden shattered bond, and she grilled Cid on the effects of that when Ignis reported in, left her with the solid opinion that Prompto Argentum was dead. Who this imposter was Monica couldn’t discern, but she doubted that Prompto Argentum had been a one time creature. Cor found the babe in a _lab_ of all things, after all.

“I would like to know how you’ve decided upon the validity of…your identity,” Monica said, tone careful so as not to upset the current reigning Monarch—young, blissfully young and left to his own devices for so long—let alone Cor who seemed determined to believe the lies of this man; this potential threat from Nifflheim.

Cor frowned, pressed his lips together, and said shortly, “You know of the identifying characteristics on the boy, Monica.”

Monica looked at Cor. “You verified it, then?”

“Still the same,” Cor nodded, and Monica wanted to punch the man. Didn’t he—

The imposter sighed heavily and interrupted the tirade that tumbled through Monica’s thoughts. He looked at her with eyes that didn’t fit her face. Old, discomforted, weary sort of eyes that almost reflected purple in certain light, but were bright dark blues in others. He looked at her and said with utter disdain, “This is about—my— _tattoo_.”

“Yes,” Monica said succinctly, surprised by the imposter’s cleverness to pick up what Monica had insinuated—that she believed the tattoo was not a good way to verify one man’s identity.

The imposter nodded, then straightened out of the slight slouch he’d been in. It gave him two more inches in height and made him impressively confident in his presence. From what Monica knew of Prompto Argentum the boy would’ve hunched further, drawn away from showing his confidence unless Noctis had encouraged him in some way. Another mark against the man, Monica felt, and she tucked it away so that she could use it to explain how utterly _idiotic_ Cor was. The boys it was expected—they were young and new to the war and its intricacies. Noctis and his retinue had been raised behind the Wall and away from the conflict, so how could they know?

“Tattoo’s distort,” the imposter began, tone even, and Monica paused surprised that he would admit such. He stared directly at her as he spoke and a shiver ran down her spine. That was the look of a killer. “Over time they fade, and as skin changes so does the tattoo.”

Monica glanced to Cor, to see if he understood—and yes, the wide eyes and relaxed muscles told Monica that he’d finally started to see. With the next words the man’s brow furrowed in thought and Monica looked back to the imposter who still— _stared_ —at her.

“Given that I’ve had this one since a child,” the imposter raised his covered right wrist, his left clenched tightly against his thigh, and the man’s gaze slid from her to it. Everything tightened about him, coiled down into a tense sort of ball even as he sat up straight. His brow pinched and his lips turned down slightly as he stared at his wrist, turned it this way and that. “It should’ve changed, right?” He glanced to her and waited.

Monica didn’t say a word, but she nodded sharply; curious to see where this explanation planned to go.

“Yet it’s the same,” the imposter said, voice quiet. “The ink is still as dark as it was when I was five. The lines and numbers are still as crisp and legible.” Here the imposter’s gaze flickered to Cor, and then to the retinue and the King. He looked uncomfortable, Monica thought, and a fissure of guilt settled into her gut.

The imposter sighed and began to tug off his glove to Monica’s surprise. “The truth is this is not a tattoo,” he said, and revealed the barcode stamped onto his wrist. As he said the lines were still a pitch black, straight and legible as the day Cor brought him back to Insomnia. “I’ve tried to get rid of it, you know?” the imposter refused to look at anyone as the mark bared free on his skin.

King Noctis sat up straight, spine stiffened in surprise and gaze utterly locked onto the brand on the imposter’s wrist. Gladiolus, Monica noted, slouched just a bit further and kept his gaze off to the side. Ignis sucked in a cut of sharp and quiet gasp, lips parted and eyes wide as he stared and _stared_. None of them had actually known about the mark—except perhaps Gladiolus. He’d always been a rather smart one, Monica remembered.

“Burned it, cut into it—tried to mar the skin of it,” the imposter murmured. “I was stopped from outright skinning myself, once.”

King Noctis looked stricken. Monica felt just the little bit sick. He’d tried to _skin himself_ to get rid of the mark? It was a good ploy for sympathy, but the sickening thought of it settled wrong with her. She could easily imagine the bright little boy terrified of the mark on his skin trying to skin it off as a child. She didn’t like the thought.

“No matter what I did the skin refused to be damaged,” the imposter looked right to her. “Burns would heal back to perfectly normal skin. Cuts would not leave scars no matter how deep. It’s…” The imposter sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “I know I was _made_ and not _born_. Figured that one out these past ten years.”

“It hasn’t been ten years since Prompto Argentum died,” Monica said sharply; she couldn’t stand the way the room seemed to be thick with horror and guilt. Although if she were honest ten years could account for the differences. The imposter looked like Prompto in the way a relation might—or someone older, perhaps.

The imposter snorted. “For you? No. For me? It has been ten long years.” He looked at her again, gaze inscrutable. “I spent time studying Solheim, you know. I’d go into the ruins and look at the marks left behind and _learn_.”

Curiosity burned within Monica’s veins. It shot up from her lungs and into her spine. They knew so precious little about Solheim; Lucis had a longstanding law that Solheim was meant to be left alone. Supposedly the Draconian had given the command to the Founder King, or so the people of the Citadel whispered whenever anything Solheim was brought up. Given that Nifflheim seemed content to follow in Solheim’s blasphemous ways—building _magitek_ of all things—people wondered on the law a lot more often in recent years.

“Solheim had a way to create life,” the imposter settled, voice shifted to a steady cadence as he set his arm down and seemed to forget about it entirely—except no, his left moved over to grasp at his wrist in a tight grip. “There was a time, brief, that their population dwindled. War, or famine, or divine wrath of the Six it was unclear.” His gaze turned a little distant. “I couldn’t quite figure the meaning of the words. They were—a little off center to typical Solheim linguistics. Potentially a series of loan-words of some sort…” A second later the imposter shook himself out of his thoughts. “At any rate they found a way to create life—to bring about an infant without a mother’s womb or a father’s seed.”

A surprising notion, Monica noted, and how like Nifflheim to follow in the footsteps of Solheim. They too created life—although Monica hadn’t been certain before. As far as she or Cor or anyone thought Nifflheim had merely been experimenting on children. A barbaric, horrifying reality that sickened all of Lucis that knew. To think they could be _growing_ children to experiment on…Monica wanted to throw up. It felt like her stomach was up in her throat and she _hated_ it.

“I don’t find it so surprising that Nifflheim could’ve have discovered the means themselves, too,” the imposter said. “Whatever was done to make me though—whatever they did it—the barcode—” King Noctis sucked in a sharp breath and Ignis looked ready to fall over, “it refuses to be damaged. The skin heals, and it grows with me. The best that I can determine is that this _is_ my skin—this barcode and that somehow—somehow I was designed so that it couldn’t be damaged.” The imposter looked directly at her, and then let go of his wrist and offered it. “Go ahead. See what I mean.”

Monica froze. He wanted her to—what? Try and damage the wrist, the barcode that was on display before her very eyes? She could catch sight of the lettering, just a faint bit of— _N-iP01_ —before Noctis stood up with his teeth ground together and face horribly pale.

“ _Enough_ Prompto!” King Noctis said, tone sharp enough that Monica straightened her back stiffly and fought the urge to just stand at attention. Monica could see the way the imposter froze, how the muscles in his back tensed up the slightest bit before he leaned back and looked directly at the King with a pinched face, but one that listened to the Command in the voice without protest. Monica watched the way the imposter took back his wrist and settled his hand down in his lap.

“I apologize,” the man murmured.

King Noctis nodded his head, and then shifted his gaze to Monica and pinned her to her seat with it. “If you refuse to believe Cor, or my retinue, of Prompto’s identity that believe _me_ Monica.” Monica felt a protest bubble up in her throat, and the King must’ve noticed it too because he narrowed his gaze and continued to speak, tone just a smidge cold like how King Regis would get sometimes. “I know each and every bit of my retinue, Monica. I know their very _souls_. They are bound to me intricately. Do you really think I could be tricked so easily as to Prompto’s identity?”

Monica pressed her lips together, glanced to the imposter, and then back to the King as she puzzled this out. “There is so much we don’t know about Nifflheim’s capabilities,” Monica started, but the King cut her off.

“I know his _soul_ ,” the King uttered, tone short. “I feel it against my own—the way my magic is shared with my retinue; how it settles into their bones.”

A sudden thought struck Monica. If the King could feel the imposter then—she whirled around at Cor. “You let him make an Oath?!”

Cor shook his head. “No. I—” He glanced to the King, and then fell quiet before he could say anything else. Monica felt a gaze at her back and turned around to see King Noctis’ eyes taking on a slightly pinkish hue as he ground his teeth together, enraged.

 _Shit_.

“The only Oaths I have,” King Noctis said, voice even although Monica could feel the rumble of fire and lightning just off to the edge under the words, “were made at the Citadel.” He eyed her; Monica felt the slightest bit of relief as that meant the imposter didn’t have a tie to the King. They could handle this. She only needed to get to the bottom of why they trusted someone show heavily— _different_. “My Oath with Prompto _returned_ one week after it was torn away from me.”

Monica froze. She looked at the King and fumbled her words until she said, “That’s—” Could they even _do_ that? Break and then rebind without—without say-so?

“Impossible?” the imposter—Prompto—the _imposter_ uttered. “I was taken away by fucking _Solheim_ magic—possibly magitek really. Some weird time travel bullshit. Hell, I got to _meet_ the Founder King for all of five minutes—arrogant ass that he was—honestly are all Lucis Caelum’s arrogant or lazy or something?”

“Shut your mouth,” King Noctis said, although there wasn’t any heat in it and the oppressive pressure in the room seemed to ease. His eyes returned to their normal grey blue and Monica felt like she could breathe. Prompto— _the imposter_ —waved a hand at the King negligently.

“Oh come on you’re an arrogant ass too,” the impos—Promp—Monica couldn’t figure out what to call him now. Her thoughts tumbled around and she felt—Gods was this what Cor dealt with when he came back and drank because King Regis wanted to spend time with him? No wonder the man ignored his duties half the time and Monica had to drag him into work if so.

“Doesn’t mean you have to _say it_ ,” Noctis whined and dropped back down into the couch. “C’mon, Prom.”

“Don’t call me Prom,” Prompto said.

“I _always_ call you Prom,” Noctis pointed out, dry wit and humor.

“Yeah but like—” Prompto seemed to struggle for his words, and then shrugged. “Only for certain times and places, Noct. Only you.”

Noctis waved a hand, smiled, and then glanced to Monica. “You get it now, right?” he said. “The bond snapped back. This _is_ Prompto.”

He was, Monica thought faintly, utterly correct. The way the King eased in the blond’s presence was the way the King had always eased in the blond’s presence. Prompto Argentum seemed to just know what to say or do to get the King to relax; to stop the rather legendarily known fury that buried itself deep into the Lucis Caelum line—a protective instinct, maybe, that made them prone to acts of violence in revenge for a slight.

Still Monica felt shaky as she said, “I understand.”

* * *

 

The last person Cid expected to come down and find him had been the tall behemoth that clung to Cor’s kid with a worrying intensity. Yet still the man stepped off the edge of the elevator not even fifteen minutes later, and by Cid’s estimate that hardly left enough time for the ensuing conversation that needed to happen upstairs. Cid eyed the man from where he lounged on his ratty old couch, settled with a decent cup of brandy and a picture filled with memories.

“They jes let ya go, did they?” Cid questioned when the man stepped forward, the slightest hint of a hesitance to him.

“My presence they need not for the conversation above,” Gilgamesh uttered, and then tilted his head toward one of the chairs. “May I?”

Cid snorted and tipped back a sip of his glass with a grumbled, “Got yerself full o’ questions, then.”

“Indeed,” Gilgamesh sighed heavily and settled himself down into the chair. “You spoke of Oaths and Consequences.”

“Yeah? Ain’t that hard t’understand.”

Gilgamesh looked down and Cid leaned himself back to regard the stranger. Taller than any man Cid had the pleasure to meet, Gilgamesh honestly looked like he stepped out of some ancient period drama. He wasn’t human, for all he pandered to it—Cid could read that plan. Something Other, like the Messengers that followed around the Oracle’s lot. Yet somehow this being bound himself in Oaths so restrictively tied to the Lucis Caelum line. They tightened like vices around the man, quieted what would normally be loud—choked him in regrets. Cid sighed heavily.

“Ask yer damned questions,” Cid grumbled tiredly and Gilgamesh looked up at him.

“You spoke of the loss of a Shield and Hand, and the Changes this wrought,” Gilgamesh uttered, and drifted forward slightly as he peered at Cid with almost glowing reddish eyes. “I ask you of these Changes—of these Consequences.”

“You ain’t lost no King,” Cid pointed out, and he let a grin cross his face at the utterly blank response he got in return.

“Have I not?” Gilgamesh uttered, voice empty.

“No,” Cid nodded. “Ya ain’t. But ya’ve witnessed one; th’ aftermath an’ madness of it.”

Neither said anything as Gilgamesh lost him into thought and understanding. Cid felt himself a bit pleased about it all; he could see the way memory moved about the man in a way it didn’t about others—how Gilgamesh near utterly relived the moment in contemplation. Cid didn’t know what happened or when, but he could see the moment when the being put together the words into a coherency that most people disregarded.

“Ah,” Gilgamesh murmured. “Yes. A madness it is.”

“An’ what’re ya gonna do ‘bout it?” Cid asked, pointedly. “Let it run its course?”

Gilgamesh hummed and said, “What would you suggest, _Prorok_?”

Cid barked off a laugh; he said with a grin, “Ya know what’s right ‘n wrong, _seelenreisender_ ,” he said, and the words that came from him were rougher than he’d used in a long, long time—yet they came to him as easy as breathing. “Ya gonna sit there an’ let another _dictate it_ t’ya?” When Gilgamesh eyed him, surprised, Cid scrubbed a hand through his beard. “S’what’s wrong in this world,” Cid muttered disdainfully. “Mors ain’t seen passed it, an’ Reggie refused t’—listenin’ like someone on high’s gonna give ‘em all th’ answers. Pah!”

Gilgamesh looked away, and Cid waited for the response—and when the man uttered, “We Forge our own Paths with each breath afore the Gate,” Cid smiled a bitter, vicious sort of thing, and waited for the man’s next question to come his way.


End file.
